Sesame Street Is Homeless After 55 Years

If I had to craft an imaginary landscape out of childhood staples, I would be standing on Sesame Street in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood with a Reading Rainbow in the distance.

That image, sadly, is fading, and not because of the sands of time. Those shows are withering in political and social winds. Each of them, created on PBS and trailblazers in children’s educational programming, is without a home. PBS itself, meanwhile, is facing a skeptical political administration and Congress, which have vowed to defund it.

Last month, I was met with sad news: Max would not renew its deal with Sesame Workshop for new episodes. The final season starts streaming Thursday.

The current limbo of “Sesame Street” aligns with a political climate that seeks to destroy diversity initiatives and questions whether teaching children to be generous and to share will help them. It’s easier to destroy something than to build it. Crafting takes time, and more importantly, it takes love. The politics of empathy aren’t just essential to finding “Sesame Street” a home. They are a light out of darkness for a society that’s losing its way on childhood.  

This morning, as darkness slowly, but surely, turned into light, I woke up my children with these reassuring words: “Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high.” In some ways, it’s a rite of passage transcending from generation to generation. If I had to craft an imaginary landscape out of childhood staples, I would be standing on Sesame Street in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood with a Reading Rainbow in the distance.

That image, sadly, is fading, and not because of the sands of time. Those shows are withering in political and social winds. Each of them, created on PBS and trailblazers in children’s educational programming, is without a home. PBS itself, meanwhile, is facing a skeptical political administration and Congress, which have vowed to defund it.

These shows didn’t just pioneer ways to teach children their letters and numbers. They created a set of tenets rooted in love – the science of sharing. During the holidays, I smiled when I saw actor Michael B. Jordan’s appearance on “Sesame Street,” which highlighted Kwanzaa. I was subsequently met with sad news, that Max would not renew its deal with Sesame Workshop for new episodes. The final season will start streaming Jan. 16, with an archive of shows available through 2027. PBS also airs past episodes. According to Variety, Max is pivoting “away from children’s content and more toward adult and family programming.”

Whether this is the end of “Sesame Street” has yet to be determined. But for right now, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and Oscar don’t have a home for the first time in over 50 years. And one thing is for certain – the neighborhood is changing. That famous street is modeled after New York’s Harlem, and I remember being awestruck on a recent walking tour of those storied streets, full of famous brownstones and beautiful culture. For all of its majesty, it, too, was a scene under siege, worn down by gentrification and the auspices of capitalism.

I can’t escape the familiarity of such erasure, especially when it is tinged with the voices of children. I think about the collective groans of people who complain about playful youth at restaurants, or crying toddlers on airplanes. “Leave them at home” is rarely a viable option, but the more I ponder society’s views on kids, I’m left with an unfortunate reality: We are phasing out the fundamental needs of children.

It’s not only that we are raising children to grow up at warp speed – we’re also raising them to be bullies, or at best, “tough-skinned.” Emi Nietfeld, a writer and co-host of “This Alien I Grew,” a parenting podcast, recently penned a commentary about “The Parents Who ‘Don’t Teach Sharing,’” an honestly harrowing bit inquiring about whether guardians should accommodate kids’ developmental stages, or cater to their worst impulses. It is beautifully written, and just as heartbreaking, because it talks about the deterioration of our collective moral fiber.

In my estimation, this is where science should enter the fray, marrying with our sense of right and wrong. A few days earlier, I watched the 2018 documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” about Fred Rogers and his iconic show. While I fought off tears and periodically pointed at the TV in agreement, a word came across my screen that was associated with him: “radical.” Folks might not see that Mister Rogers was a radical preacher, but that’s because we’ve collectively sullied the term. “Radical” is not synonymous with “extremist.” It is akin to far-reaching and impactful change. All of my favorite preachers were radical in some way – whether it be Martin Luther King Jr. and his rebukes of capitalism, or the Rev. James Cone, who had the audacity to teach Black liberation theology.

Mister Rogers, with his cardigan drip, that sweater-wearing prowess, was a fiery change-maker, as noted in Chantel Tattoli’s article about his college days in The Paris Review. “Rogers sure as hell was political – the Neighborhood messaged countercultural values like diplomacy over militancy – and he himself got vocal when the wellbeing of children was at stake,” reads one key quote from Michael Long, author of “Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers.”

What shines through, whether via religion or science, is the golden rule. The “Reading Rainbow” documentary, “Butterfly in the Sky,” proudly discussed how the show was crafted by educators – for educators. Part of the genius of “Sesame Street,” and a large reason for its sense of diversity, is because it was largely influenced by Black psychiatrists, most notably Chester Pierce. The goal of these shows, or rather, the gold, is self-worth.

It’s why, I sense, that each of these shows has a singular opponent – the politics of fear. Fox News once called Mister Rogers an “evil, evil man” for teaching people they were special, “just the way you are.” “Reading Rainbow” was undone by the politics of the No Child Left Behind Act. The current limbo of “Sesame Street” aligns with a political climate that seeks to destroy diversity initiatives and questions whether teaching children to be generous and to share will help them.

It’s easier to destroy something than to build it. Crafting takes time, and more importantly, it takes love. The politics of empathy aren’t just essential to finding “Sesame Street” a home. They are a light out of darkness for a society that’s losing its way on childhood.