Big Bird's Legacy

A reader writes:

Holt obviously has no children. As a pediatrician, I attempted to heed the American Academy of Pediatrics’ advice on limiting TV for my kids.  I tried to teach them about all I wanted them to learn from an early age- I got nowhere.  Once my kids started to watch Sesame Street, I saw their eyes light up.  They all of a sudden developed a love of letters and numbers and shapes that I couldn’t instill in them personally.  The education that these talking puppets gave my children has been far more impressive than anything I did.  There’s some kind of magic that spreads into a child’s mind when a talking and singing puppet talks directly to them.  Thank God that these puppets were used for good and not evil.  I wouldn’t have stood a chance no matter how moral a compass I tried to imbue them with.