A topic that has been circulating my social media recently is the iconic Muppets of Sesame Street becoming “homeless,” after HBO Max reportedly canceled their deal with Sesame Workshop to renew the show for new episodes on the streaming service in 2025.
The popular opinion online is that this decision is both timely and unfortunate, considering the fact that Sesame Street and the Public Broadcasting Service have recently been put under the microscope by Project 2025, a product of the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation that calls for the removal of PBS’s federal funding. The Heritage Foundation, in their words, “works in our nation’s capital to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish” and “[doesn’t] work on behalf of any special interest or political party.”
But even a quick skim of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise–or simply looking at the full title—it is apparent that all signs point to The Heritage Foundation swaying dramatically towards the Right. Now, the purpose of this essay is not to place a moral judgment on conservatism or on The Heritage Foundation for being a Right-leaning non-profit. I am here to make a case for Sesame Street, and public broadcasting, and how these two things provide equitable education, at-home materials and lessons for families, and characters that children can see themselves in for the children in our country who need it most. Providing education for all children, in my opinion, is a bipartisan issue and requires collaboration and cooperation on both sides of the aisle without interference from “any special interest or political party.”
Equitable Education: Representation and Culturally Responsive Learning
Equitable education can be defined as giving all students the equal opportunity to reach their full academic potential regardless of their circumstances, background, or any other factors that may inhibit them from receiving the same education as someone who does not experience the same circumstances as they do. These are all important parts of Sesame Workshop’s mission, “to help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.” Sesame Workshop creates programming for children at the most vital point in their educational development: the very beginning. While it may seem like a simple preschool television show, Sesame Street provides children with culturally responsive characters, settings, and situations that mirror their own lives. Children watching can identify with these mirrors, while engaging with the show’s aims at building “school readiness…playful problem-solving…support [for] emotional well-being [and promoting] positive self-identity” in children. Whether these be characters that live in a community that reflects the ones they live in, characters of color, characters of different abilities similar to theirs, and circumstances that are similar to what they as young children might be experiencing, these seemingly simple examples of representation can make all the difference in allowing children to see a mirror of their own lives, promoting interest through relatability and engagement with the show’s educational material.
So what about this is…controversial?
Well, according to Project 2025, PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) has demonstrated a supposed “pattern of bias,” catering to a Left-leaning audience stating that “PBS and NPR do not even bother to run programming that would attract conservatives.” Project 2025 also claims that public broadcasting “immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism” rather than what President Lyndon Johnson promised the country PBS would become, a service that “[enriches] our homes, [educates] our families, and [assists] our classroom,” and that conservatives should not have to pay taxes for “the suppression of [their] own views.” (Project 2025, pg. 246)
The most important part of working with young children is empathy, little ones have big feelings that they do not always understand or know what to do with. When reading Project 2025, I did my best to extend the same empathy to those who wrote this document, who probably feel really hurt and unheard if a government-backed service is suppressing their views or treating them unfairly. But to this, I pose a question: what is it about the educational programming on PBS—Sesame Street, in this case—that is inherently “liberal?” Is it that it teaches kindness?
Or that it provides kids in underserved communities representation, not only on TV but in what they are learning? Is it recognizing that communities of color, and the children growing up within them, do experience hardships within education that are historically ingrained in our country since its conception?
This isn’t a “pattern of bias” at all. In urban communities—and communities that unfortunately too often need support with education—there is too often an overlap between communities that are underserved and communities of color. This is due to historical factors on which our country was built. This includes redlining, when “The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) created “Residential Security” maps of major American cities…Neighborhoods considered high risk or “Hazardous” were often “redlined” by lending institutions, denying them access to capital investment which could improve the housing and economic opportunity of residents.” (NCRC)
Upon the “surge of suburbanization,” white Americans often moved into the suburbs, communities of higher property values—that they could afford. This resulted in the “Hazardous” communities where People of Color lived becoming socioeconomically disadvantaged because of lower property values. These lower property values directly influence the funding (or lack thereof) of schools within underserved communities, causing them to have fewer resources, poor learning and working conditions for students and staff, and higher teacher turnover rates. This is what gave the founders of Sesame Street the “simple but revolutionary idea: television could help prepare disadvantaged children for school.” (Sesame Workshop)
“Television that could help disadvantaged children for school.” That sounds pretty true to President Lyndon Johnson’s visions for PBS to me.
Windows and Resources for All Children
Even if children in underserved communities having access to quality educational materials wasn’t enough to support public broadcasting and Sesame Street’s equitable education efforts, equity in education still benefits all children in some way. Even if they are not directly represented in the educational programming they are consuming. Providing children with diverse “windows” at an early age exposes them to the world around them and people they may encounter in real life. This teaches them to be kind, and to approach others with empathy. But according to the Heritage Project, children learning about others different from them and those whose experiences differ from theirs are, “poison [to] our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status.” This claim is extremely harmful, because learning about the ways that our country is shaped by how certain communities are marginalized because it might make kids feel “guilty” ignores important parts of our country’s history that continue to contribute towards the reasons why communities need Sesame Street in the first place.
But, according to the Heritage Foundation themselves, a core principle of conservative thought is the belief in, “policies [that] protect our national interests, preserve our alliances of free peoples, vigorously counter threats to our security and interests, and advance prosperity through economic freedom at home and abroad.” (The Heritage Foundation) In simpler terms, America is at its best when our military is strong and supported by the government, with the Left, “continu[ing] to push policies…depleting the strength of the military.”
The Heritage Foundation even suggests an idea for how a Conservative President should provide greater support for military families and children education-wise by, “Support[ing] legislation giving education savings account options to military families.” (Project 2025, pg. 6)
But while they stated this in one breath, in the next The Heritage Foundation claims that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion should be eliminated across the board, with the next President “deleting the terms…diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”)…out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” (Project 2025, pg. 5) Despite military members and their families already being beneficiaries of DEI policies, such as employers legally being unable to discriminate during the hiring process based on military or Veteran status. Military children are also included in the idea of equitable education, because military children deserve the same quality education and support from educators no matter their unique circumstances, where they live, and their unique needs that may come from these factors. Just like kids living in underserved communities. It’s almost as if equitable education benefits all children in some way. Sesame Street “Recogniz[ed] the need for first-rate media-based resources to support military families,” (Sesame Street for Military Families) has an entire website of resources for military families to better support their children through their unique experience. This initiative was made possible through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense and the Office of Military Family and Community Policy to support the military and their families.
Conclusion So, other than recognizing the very real things that communities of color go through, and providing these students with a quality educational program that could help them achieve their full academic potential regardless of this, providing all children with exposure to identities and experiences different from theirs in order to inspire empathy, and providing resources for a community of families and children who some may not consider to be marginalized, nothing about Sesame Street is particularly Left-leaning. Even if it was, it shouldn’t be, because the reality of it is that every child deserves a quality education no matter their identity or circumstance. All of our children deserve to be smart, strong, and kind and the education that they receive should give them the tools to achieve that. Sesame Street did. Ensuring that our nation’s children have access to educational programming that supports their literacy and learning is something that everyone should care about. Only through all children being properly educated and supported can we ever reach an America where freedom through education, opportunity through knowledge, and prosperity for students can flourish through students finding the strength within themselves to build a better world for everyone.