The letter of the day - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

As the parent now of two young people who are old enough to make their own decisions about the entertainment they choose to consume (and not to consume), it has been interesting to see the quality in some of the shows and what they offer to our children aside from fun visuals and easy-to-digest, straightforward storylines kids can follow.
Some of the shows are straight sugar. Lots of flashy visuals, fast-paced action and propulsive music, all meant to excite the kids and keep them on the edge of their seats, while others are meant to be more passive and calm. As the parent of two kids under five who’s tired all the time, I can certainly appreciate the value of shows that aim to take their foot off the gas a bit. However, what I’ve really come to appreciate is the educational value in some of these shows and how they work to teach children in a way that engages them and gets them excited about learning something new.
And while I’ve been living this reality for a few years now, this really comes about at a time when a cruel goof with too much power south of the border threw the future of Sesame Street, perhaps the most beloved children’s institution of the past 55 years aside from, maybe, Disney, into uncertainty with his threats to dismantle public programming from bodies like NPR and PBS, the long-time home of Sesame Street.
My kids - my daughter especially - have come to love Sesame Street. They like the time-honoured characters that I grew up with, like Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, the Cookie Monster, Grover, Elmo and Big Bird, but they like a lot of the new characters and segments as well. Recently, I’ve been taking in the show a bit more thoroughly than I have in the past, actually paying attention to the segments, the characters and the stories. My daughter guesses the number of the day and the letter of the day and she pays attention to the rest of the programming that surrounds those numbers and letters. 
When I was watching the other day, there was a segment involving a young Black character and she was talking about her hair and how it was different from other characters’ hair. There was then a bit about the science behind pigment in hair which, frankly, taught me a thing or two that I didn’t even know. The show has made a point - especially in recent years - of exploring our differences, while sowing seeds of acceptance, understanding and diversity so that, perhaps, when children like mine interact with people of other races, people who live with different conditions or familial situations, they will have somewhat of a baseline of knowledge that reminds them that they’ve “met” someone like this before and that maybe they know a little something about them before even actually meeting them.
I won’t go into the aforementioned goof’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion - it’s well documented and disgusting, regardless of how many people around the world support it - but Sesame Street’s are the very principles that the world needs now. And, when kids learn about differences in the world and among its people (or maybe it’s them and they use a wheelchair or have a visual impairment and they see a character who’s just like them), it comes at them early and at a time when they learn that differences are not something to be feared, but to be embraced and understood.
Sesame Street will live on with a new home on Netflix (in addition to its long-time home of PBS, as long as it exists) and the world and its young people are better for it. We can only hope that they are looking and listening.