Howard Blumenthal ‘74 (pictured above) has had an extensive career in the multimedia industry but most recently, he founded the “Kids on Earth” project, a PBS public television children’s series about global cultures. Through this project, Blumenthal conducts interviews with children from different countries to explore their interests and highlight similarities across different cultures (Courtesy of www.kidsonearth.org).
To Howard Blumenthal ‘74, co-creator of PBS’s “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego,” one-time syndicated newspaper columnist and current Ivy League academic, Geneseo was a launchpad to a lengthy career in different fields.
Blumenthal was an English and communication major while at Geneseo; outside of the classroom, Blumenthal worked as co-editor-in-chief of The Lamron, member of WGSU and one of the founding members of Geneseo’s now defunct Geneseo Student Television. Running the media gamut at Geneseo began Blumenthal on a multimedia path.
Today, Blumenthal’s newest project uses his experience with children’s entertainment and long career in multimedia. He is the founder and main force behind the “Kids on Earth” project. The title explains the project’s premise; Blumenthal travels to countries around the world to understand what kids on Earth are like today.
The main lesson Blumenthal has learned for himself after hundreds of half-hour interviews is simple.
“Never make an assumption about anybody,” Blumenthal said. “Never judge a person by how they look because after a half-hour conversation, you’ll realize all your assumptions were ridiculous.”
“Kids on Earth” has so far canvassed kids from countries as far afield as China, Uganda, Bulgaria and the United Kingdom among others. Next, Blumenthal said he plans to travel to South America and to other countries in Asia.
“I follow what they’re interested in, and they’re interested in everything, from explaining hunting to me in Eastern Kentucky to that same child explaining why he intends to be a pharmacologist and not an orthopedic surgeon,” Blumenthal said. “That kid reminds me of someone I meet in Bulgaria, but not kids in Hong Kong, who remind me more of kids I talked to in the suburbs outside Philadelphia.”
To find his way across the world and into places where he would be able to conduct lengthy interviews, Blumenthal “somewhat radically” uses LinkedIn. Blumenthal has found that platforms like massive social networks like LinkedIn can connect acquaintances across the world with vastly different world views. For the kids he talks to, that connection is second nature.
“If I’m in a lower-income village in Bulgaria, [kids are] still watching YouTube, they’re still talking about Ariana Grande,” Blumenthal said. “Through the Internet, kids can look at a little window and figure out to become a doctor … making things is not a barrier, shooting and editing video is not a barrier, contacting people around the world [is not a barrier].”
While it may seem significantly less foreign today, being a Geneseo student in the 1970s was tantamount to taking off across an ocean coming from the New York metropolitan area.
“Geneseo was a very foreign place to people coming from New York City. Now that’s no longer true, but when I was here, we were a tiny minority,” Blumenthal said. “We were in the middle of the land of farms at this teacher’s school where it was not easy to get to any big cities … there was no I-390, there was no highway.”
Blumenthal counsels current students to find their own outlets to build communication skills.
“Write as much as you can and make sure people are reading it and then write some more,” Blumenthal said. “Out of everything, the writing is the most important thing I learned how to do [starting at Geneseo].”