It is almost too perfect that the first African-American President of the United States was elected in time for the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. The world is finally beginning to look the way that PBS show always made it out to be.

So it is to the credit of this daunting cultural landmark — a programme that has taught generations of children to count, countless parents how to teach and is seen in 125 countries around the world — that the November 10 anniversary is not a frenzy of preening self-celebration. Episode No. 4187 is as child-centric and respectful of routine as any other.

The special guest — first lady Michelle Obama — doesn’t make her appearance alongside Big Bird until midway into a show crammed with the usual preschool didactics.

The pedagogy hasn’t changed, but the look and tone of Sesame Street has evolved. Forty years on, this is your mother’s Sesame Street, only better dressed and gentrified. The opening is no longer a realistic rendition of urban skyline but an animated, candy-coloured chalk drawing of a preschool Arcadia, with flowers and butterflies and stars. The set, brownstones and garbage bins, has lost the messy graffiti and gritty smudges of city life over the years. Now there are green spaces, tofu and yoga.

The mission has shifted to the more immediate concerns of paediatricians and progressive parents.

Michelle’s message on the anniversary episode isn’t an exhortation to future soldiers, scientists and presidents to be all that they can be, but to tiny consumers to eat the freshest food they can find. “Veggies taste so good when they come fresh from the garden, don't they?”

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