Iftah Ya Simsim (; meaning "Open Sesame") is the first international co-production of the American children's television series Sesame Street created in the Arab world. It premiered in Kuwait and Morocco on September 14, 1979, and was broadcast in 22 Arabic-speaking countries, running until June 23, 1989. The program remained well-known decades after it went off the air.
A few months after its premiere, Iftah Ya Simsim became one of the most popular and successful children's programs in many Arab states. The show inspired many studies, which demonstrated that children benefited from watching it. In 2010, efforts began to revive the show for a new generation of young viewers in the Arab world. In late 2013, fifteen writers and producers from Bidaya Media attended training about its educational methodology and production techniques from the staff of the American show in New York. Iftah Ya Simsim was in pre-production in March 2014, and the first phase of auditions took place in April 2014. The new series debuted on September 1, 2015.
History A few months after the 1969 debut of Sesame Street on PBS in the US, producers from several countries all around the world approached the Children's Television Workshop (CTW, later the Sesame Workshop, or "the Workshop"), the organization responsible for the show's production, to create and produce versions of Sesame Street in their countries. Co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney was approached by German public television officials about a year after the U.S. version debuted. Many years later, Cooney recalled, "To be frank, I was really surprised, because we thought we were creating the quintessential American show. We thought the Muppets were quintessentially American, and it turns out they're the most international characters ever created". She hired former CBS executive Mike Dann, who left commercial television to become her assistant, as a CTW vice president. One of Dann's tasks was to field offers to produce versions of Sesame Street in other countries. By summer 1970, he had established the first international agreements for what the CTW would come to call "co-productions".
Kuwait's 1980 census, conducted shortly after the original show's premiere, showed that 48% of its citizens were "either totally illiterate or ... barely [able to] read or write". Several studies in Kuwait showed that parents' illiteracy has an adverse effect on their children's educational and social development. Half of the Kuwaitis living in the country's rural areas were illiterate. Literacy rates for women and girls were worse: UNESCO reported in 2005 that they "account for two thirds of the region's illiterates". In 2000, before the revived show aired, the Arab region had some of the world's lowest adult literacy rates, at just over 62%, which was significantly below the world average of 84% and the average in developing countries (almost 76.5%).
In 1976, the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development held a series of workshops and seminars, attended by educators, mass media officers, and social planners. In 1978, educators, mass media officers, and social planners agreed to adopt Sesame Street as a feasible and economical solution for the low preschool attendance. They approached the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the producers of the American show, and purchased the rights to create an Arab version for US$2.5 million. With funding from the Arab Gulf States Joint Program Production Institution, efforts were made to create a co-production for children in Kuwait and the Arab world. This program, called Iftah Ya Simsim, premiered in Kuwait and Morocco in 1979 and ran until 1989, when the Gulf War stopped production. It was broadcast in 22 Arab countries and remained well-known decades after it went off the air. In June 2010, the Sesame Workshop and the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States (ABEGS), a regional Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) organization dedicated to education, research, and development, agreed to bring back the show.
Original series Iftah Ya Simsim was the first children's educational TV program of its kind in the Arab world and the first Sesame Street co-production in the region. It was the first co-production to use Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
Production The series' development was like the American version of Sesame Street in the late 1960s. TThe GCC had considered creating a co-production for many years, so member countries held consultations to determine how to proceed. Many of the early co-productions were simple, dubbed versions with local-language voice-overs and instructional cutaways, but the GCC wanted to create its own original version. The GCC established the Joint Program Production Institute (JPPI) to work with the CTW to create a Sesame Street co-production as well as several children's TV shows. The JPPI formed a team, which visited the CTW in New York to negotiate the production of 130 30-minute programs, purchasing the rights to create an Arab version for US$2.5 million, and bringing in experts from throughout the Arab world "to introduce an all-encompassing Arabic curriculum that would teach and cultivate Arab values and culture".
The production of the show consisted of three stages. The first stage was pre-production research, which identified the basic educational needs of children under the age of six. The second stage involved creating a pilot reel to test the show's effects on children and to be reviewed by educators, sociologists, psychologists, and other experts invited to a seminar. Research began in August 1977; the team was led by an educator and included a linguist and a psychologist, all of whom were faculty members of Kuwait University. The show was tested with children from different socioeconomic groups, aged three to six, in kindergartens and preschools in four representative cities across Arab countries. The team proposed curriculum goals based upon the research, and during a seminar, Arab and CTW educators agreed on ten final goals.
Iftah Ya Simsim premiered in Kuwait and Morocco in September 1979 and was broadcast in all Arabic-speaking countries excluding Egypt.
Content Iftah Ya Simsim focused on Arab heritage, like the wedding rituals of countries in the region, and included Arabic poems and songs. It emphasized the importance of scientific thinking and the impact of technology on society. It sought to provide children with experiences that enriched their knowledge of their environment and improved their reasoning skills, through teaching them mathematical and geometric concepts. The show introduced its viewers to Arab history through segments that, for example, showed castles that were the center of historic battles. Geography was highlighted, especially the location of countries and their cities and capitals, which also helped children increase their sense of belonging and pride in their Arab heritage. The program also emphasized children's social awareness, especially their understanding of social roles and their functions.
Unlike the American show, Iftah Ya Simsim covered the topic of spirituality because of the importance of religion in Arab culture, so the producers' goals included teaching children about Islamic principles, positive social behavior, personal manners, and the importance of traits like honesty, respect for parents, loyalty, and social interaction. According to researchers Misbah Al-Khayr and Hashim Al-Samira'i, the program reinforced "the values and ethics that are derived from the teaching of orthodox Islam ... to help children develop a sound moral vision on the basis of which they will build their family relationships, and which will reinforce the values of cooperation, love, and justice". New Muppets were created, inspired by cultural traditions in the Arab world, from the shadow puppets of Syria to the puppets of Egypt, some of the oldest puppets in the world. The show's set consisted of an intricately traditional Arab neighborhood called Sharee Eshreen (20th Street).
The producers wanted to present the characteristics of the Arabic language and its alphabet. Because pre-production research showed that, although many dialects are spoken in the region, 90% of Arab children could understand Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the show chose it as its language. Linguist Kees Versteegh stated that the language used in Iftah Ya Simsim was "based on an explicit didactic and linguistic concept". The show's developers decided to use specific aspects of the language. Despite the absence of case endings in the dialects spoken by many of its users, the producers used them and other MSA features. They also specified which features should be used sparingly, such as passive verb forms, and which they wanted to avoid completely, including certain prepositions. According to Versteegh, "These principles have been followed rather closely". Children who appeared on the show made few grammatical errors in MSA, and although colloquialisms were used rarely, their conversations and speech patterns had an informal quality. Versteegh postulated that this was due to the use of intonation patterns and interjections, rather than grammatical and lexical items from vernacular use. He also said that Iftah Ya Simsim proved that it was "possible to use an informal register of Modern Standard Arabic". Versteegh reported that although the show was criticized in some Arab countries, particularly Egypt, for containing too many colloquialisms, he thought the criticism was biased and that "the selection of lexical items in any pan-Arabic programme will probably never satisfy everybody".
Legacy and influence According to researcher Ibrahim Al-Khulaifi, "In a few months, Iftah Ya Simsim became one of the most popular and successful programs for children in many Arab states". Critics called it "one of the most successful pan-Arab collaborations of educators, creators, writers and artists from the Middle East". The show continued to trigger nostalgia among fans, some of whom watched its reruns well into the 1990s. Rym Ghazal of The National claimed, "No Arabic children's television show was as popular and influential in the Middle East in the 1980s as Iftah Ya Sim Sim...because it offered an alternative way of learning that hardly existed in the Arab world at the time, just as Sesame Street had previously done in the West".
Iftah Ya Simsim inspired "a flood of studies", from scientific research to doctoral or master's theses submitted to Arab, European, and American universities. No studies were conducted during the show's first five years, largely due to a lack of government cooperation and unsuccessful attempts marred by subjects dropping out of the studies. In 1981, however, the JPPI invited children from Arab countries to Kuwait to assess how they assimilated the program. Education, social, and media specialists assessed their attitudes toward the show and found that most viewers benefited from watching it. Parents reported that their children's language use and ability improved, and the JPPI received many letters of appreciation and was commended for their efforts in producing the show. In 1984, in one of the first studies conducted researching the show's effects on its young viewers, Ibrahim Al-Khulaifi compared the relationship between the viewing behavior of Kuwaiti preschoolers of Iftah Ya Simsim and certain developmental and environmental variables. Al-Khulaifi found that variables such as socioeconomic status, parental education (especially the mother's), sex, age, year in school, birth order, and family attitudes about the show influenced the frequency of viewing.