Joan Ganz Cooney

Can television be used to teach children?

It can. Duh. Find a parent in America who has not plopped their child in front of the TV (or an iPad, whatever), turned on "Sesame Street" and let Count von Count count. Van, too, ah ah ah!... (Fine, these TV-less parents exist, mostly in Amish country and Ozark backwoods.)

But back in the 1960s, this was an open-ended question. TV truly was an idiot box. It took Joan Ganz Cooney to make that change.

Ganz Cooney (her grandfather was Emil Ganz, the first Jewish mayor of Phoenix) created the Children's Television Workshop in 1968. The goal of the non-profit was to make educational programming for children. A year later, "Sesame Street" was born. The rest is television and child-rearing history.

Sadly, Max, the current distributor of "Sesame Street", will stop airing new episodes after 2025. Here's hoping it finds a new home...

For how will today's young Americans learn how to teach their future children?