But the show was never just about improving test scores. Perhaps the most radical part of the Sesame DNA has always been its social activism. From the start, Sesame targeted lower-income, urban kids—the ones who lived on streets with garbage cans sitting in front of their rowhouse apartments. The show arrived on the heels of riots in Washington, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. “It was intentional from the beginning to show different races living together,” says David Kleeman, executive director of the American Center for Children and Media.

Sesame Street is now exported to 16 countries and regions. In South Africa, where as recently as 2008 the president insisted that HIV does not cause AIDS, the show features a ginger-coloured, HIV-positive Muppet. In 1998, a Middle East version was launched, coproduced by Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli and Palestinian Muppets lived on different streets, but they would sometimes visit each other to play. Israeli Muppets could appear in Palestinian territory, but not without being invited. But the intifada made the notion of coexistence and cooperation politically untenable and it was cancelled. The show returned in 2006, but now there are separate versions produced for Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian one no longer features Jews at all.

Guernsey is the author of Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age 5