Is it true that Mr. Wizard died?!

Is it true that Mr. Wizard died?

I loved his show on Nickelodeon growing up.

If you watched his show on Nickelodeon when you were growing up, you really don't understand Don Herbert's impact.

There were three channels of black-and-white television in the 1950s, and not all markets had all three channels. When you got to school, you'd talk to your friends about what you'd seen, and you knew they had watched it, because the other two channels had nothing interesting on. And they watched it *exactly* the same time you did, because there weren't any VCRs, much less TiVOs.

This was the age of Kukla, Frank & Ollie, of Spin and Marty, of Sky King, and of My Friend Flicka. There were virtually no members of minority groups on TV, but that wasn't entirely bad, because white kids were being constantly exposed to nice people who *never* uttered a racist comment, people we wanted to emulate.

Mr. Wizard taught us all about the world we lived in, and made us think that perhaps it was all within our grasp, and that we could become modern alchemists, too. It was mostly kids who watched Mr. Wizard in the 1950s and read John W. Campbell's "Astounding Science Fiction" who put together NASA in the 1960s, and put a man on the moon in less than a decade.

They tell us that if we wanted to build another manned moon mission today, we'd never be able to accomplish it in ten short years.

Mr. Wizard was a kind and gentle man, much like the Fred Rogers that came along decades later, but with a message of empowerment rather than one of self-acceptance.

Today's kids are growing up with neither Mr. Wizard, nor Mr. Rogers, nor even Mr. Green Jeans and Dancing Bear. Instead, they get Chris Rock - and don't get me wrong, Chris Rock is incredibly funny, but it's not the message our kids need most.

Every generation, I am told, thinks the younger generation is going to hell. If so, in this case, it's not the younger generation's fault. It's ours.