Learning about resilience from Bluey, the cartoon dog, and tuition

Missed the series that inculcates hardiness in kids? Don't worry. In Singapore, tuition will achieve the same goal

- Raymond Goh

Three scientists recently sat through 150 episodes of Bluey (2018 to present), the popular Australian cartoon series, and concluded that it is a great way to teach children about resilience.

When I first read what these intrepid martyrs did for the sake of science, I thought to myself: three intelligent adults binge-watching 150 episodes of an animated series intended for five-year-olds, overcoming challenges like bleary eyes, acute tedium and even exploding brains... What better way to demonstrate resilience to children, right?

But after reading the full study published in the academic journal, Educational and Developmental Psychologist, I quickly learnt that I was mistaken.

What these three resolute researchers did was to map all 150 episodes of the animated series onto something called the Grotberg Resilience Framework. With the data it yielded, they could then confidently compute that nearly half of all the episodes showcased scenarios with Bluey - the eponymous character and talking puppy - exhibiting resilient behaviour.

They also discovered that Bluey's grit is very often facilitated by Chilli. By that, I don't mean to say that a fiery spice is employed to extort resilience from the poor puppy, but that Bluey's mother, who gently encourages him to be resilient, is named Chilli.

By incorporating Bluey's show of hardiness and his mother's show of support as a recurring story arc, the target audience - bleary-eyed five-year-olds - gets to see resilient behaviour being modelled onscreen and are thus guided to become quite resilient themselves.

In fact, they might become so resilient that they are able to power through more episodes of Bluey being resilient, with nary a brain exploding.

RESILIENT IS THE NEW OBEDIENT