If I’ve learned one thing from being an animation fan my entire life, it’s that a cartoon doesn’t have to be educational to teach you something. I think it’s important to remember that when debating the “usefulness” of watching cartoons.

This isn’t meant to belittle the educational cartoons, either. I’ve spent many an afternoon watching Arthur and Cyberchase. To this day, the animation/live action-hybrid Blue’s Clues is still a favorite show. They’re all three well-done shows where a learning outcome is clearly displayed, regardless of whether it’s a lesson about friendship, math and science, or exploring the world around you.

The E/I rating (as near as I can tell) helps identify cartoons that aren’t necessarily educational in nature, but fit a certain criteria to be considered “educational enough”. More recent examples of this include Magi-Nation, which offered interesting and relevant moments of math and science instruction interspersed throughout the storyline, and Winx Club, which encourages girls to develop strong, positive characters.

Then you have the cartoons that are either built around a trendy toy or game (card or video). Because they’re really trying to sell something, they get written off. The cartoons are often shorter than cartoons in the educational or E/I categories, and the writing can get downright insipid at times. That said, though, the writers on these cartoons take advantage of the nature of the world they’re writing in to slip in mini-lessons from science and social studies. I can even think of a couple of cartoons that promote literacy simply by having the characters read frequently. My favorite cartoons tend to fall into this last group, and I can’t tell you how many things I learned from those cartoons in the 80′s are still with me now as an adult.

Just because something isn’t “educational” doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from it.