**They Gave Elmo a Racism Re-Education and Thought Nobody Would Notice.**
It was 2020. The fever was at its peak.
Sesame Workshop partnered with CNN to air a town hall called Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism. Elmo sat with his dad Louie while a grown man explained to a red puppet that people of color are being treated unfairly across the country because of how they look, their culture, race, and who they are.
Then they introduced two new Black Muppets specifically to teach toddlers the ABCs of Racial Literacy. Elmo asked why Wes had brown skin. The answer involved melanin, identity politics, and a song about being an upstander to racism.
Elmo was five years old. Fictional. Made of felt.
They gave him a racial justice curriculum anyway.
For more than fifty years Sesame Street taught children to read, count, and treat people with basic kindness. It was one of the few things in American culture that belonged to everyone regardless of politics. Then the same people who turned every other institution into an ideological vehicle decided Sesame Street was too valuable to leave alone.
The show that once taught the alphabet now teaches five year olds about systemic racism. The show that introduced generations to the joy of reading now partners with CNN to explain protest movements to toddlers. The show that belonged to childhood decided childhood itself needed to be politicized.
The fever broke. The woke era is retreating. But the executives who made those decisions are still running Sesame Workshop. The curriculum they built is still out there. And the instinct that produced it never went away.
This newsletter covers what happened to American education during those years and what is still happening now that most people have stopped paying attention.
35% off through September 1st because children deserve better than what the institutions supposedly serving them became.
Upgrade your subscription today and help us keep covering what the education establishment hopes you forget.
