Before Fred Rogers slipped into his shoes and cardigan, he was a young theology student at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1950s. There, he studied under developmental psychologist Margaret McFarland, who would eventually inspire, influence, and actively shape him. Mr Rogers place. To say that this show wouldn’t be the same without McFarland is an understatement. Over the course of thirty years, Rogers and McFarland met to discuss psychology, upcoming writings, songs, and of course, children, weekly and sometimes daily, and his wisdom was written all over the place.
McFarland was already a major figure in the children’s psyche before meeting Fred Rogers. After earning his doctorate at Columbia and teaching in Melbourne, Australia, McFarland returned to Pittsburgh in 1953 and founded the Arsenal Family and Children’s Center with Drs. Benjamin Spock, famous for his studies of child development, and famous psychologist Erik Erikson, known for combining the eight stages of development and the term “crisis.”
Unlike Spock and Erikson, McFarland kept a very low profile throughout her career and wrote very little about her teaching philosophies other than her book and one magazine article “on the development of motherhood.” But his legacy has been carried on by his students, Rogers chief among them, and the core teaching of what he taught should sound familiar, even if their origins are not.
1. Whatever is human is spoken, and whatever is not spoken is controlled.
When Fred began studying child development at Pitt, McFarland helped him connect with his childhood memories and feelings. When he did this, he used the expression, “Whatever is human is spoken, and whatever is spoken is controlled.” Simply put, it is OK to feel difficult emotions openly, and more importantly, when people do this, they find healthy ways to cope. This theme comes up again and again Mr Rogers place, like when Mister Rogers teaches kids how to be crazy without hurting anyone, and feel many other complex emotions. It makes for a catchy song and an important lesson in emotional intelligence, but like many of Roger’s great ideas, it started with McFarland in the classroom.
2. Attitudes are not taught — they are caught.
In an interview with the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2003, David McCullough laid out McFarland’s worldview: “What he teaches, in fact, is that attitudes are not taught, they are acquired.
Rogers recalled McFarland’s favorite examples of this use in Stuart Omans and Maurice O’Sullivan’s book, Shakespeare Plays Class. He had a famous artist from Carnegie Mellon University come to Arsenal but he told him not to teach, but to have fun with clay in front of the children.
“And that’s what he did. He came once a week full time, sat with the 4- and 5-year-olds as they played, and he ‘loved’ his clay in front of them,” Rogers said. “The kids loved his enthusiasm for it, and that’s what mattered.” So, like most good things, ‘teaching’ is about honesty.”
3. Learning depends on love.
McFarland championed a teaching philosophy based on love and compassion. His friend and colleague Pastor Douglas Nowicki remembers that, “For him, learning was possible only in the matter of love.”
Love is perhaps one of the most important supporting characters Mr Rogers placein addition to Mr. McFeely and Daniel Tiger. She had many ways to say “I love you” and how she always made the children watching know that she loved them for who they were, not what they wore or how they did their hair. But love might have fallen behind or been overshadowed by King Friday if it hadn’t been for Margaret.
4. Be a spectator.
Pittsburgh play therapist Carole McNamee, one of McFarland’s students, credits him with being one of the sharpest observers. “He could see things. He was good that way,” McNamee said on the podcast When Fred Met Margaret.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before or since,” Margaret Mary Kimmel, Ph.D. professor emeritus of library and information science at Pitt, agreed. Kimmel eventually became Mister Rogers’ mentor and taught a class called Early Childhood and Media, which McFarland helped teach and develop. “Margaret talked about how the child interacts with the mother. ‘Did you see her face and the child’s face? What happened when she started screaming? How did the mother handle it?’ I learned a lot by looking at her watch and explaining to the class what happens between a mother and a child.”
Fred Rogers may have been the star of the show, but he never stops letting the kids be the center of attention. Although she can’t see the children watching at home, her soft-spokenness and purposeful pauses help them feel seen.
5. Look to the assistants.
In times of crisis, Rogers told the children, “Look to the helpers. You will always find helpers.” This lesson comes from his mother, not McFarland, but McFarland may have been Plato’s best example of this. Never married or had children, he was completely devoted to his work and yet a humble helper. There was no ego that forced him to get credit for the show, he loved teaching, and giving ideas like warm cookies that he baked and delivered to friends on a regular basis. Rogers’ ability to turn his studies into successful television programs was just another sign of a job well done. Rogers’ mother taught him to look for helpers, but it was at McFarland that he found them.
This article was originally published
