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Problem Solution : Senoon Street And Sesame Street

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Sophia Cajigas Ms. Milliner EES21QH-01 01 June 2017 Problem-Solution Essay Many people in the United States grew up with shows like Sesame Street. Fun, ‘children’ shows that offered important social and educational values. Recently, there have been severe budget cuts to PBS, the program that funds Sesame Street and other educational programs such as the YouTube show Crash Course. While this seems like an issue that shouldn’t be brought into the public eye, there are many repercussions to completely terminating very relevant, poignant programs. People may not see the immediate problem with terminating a program such as PBS, but many educators fear for the future after these cuts. PBS offers free videos of educational programming for teachers to use in class. They offer youtube videos, websites with educational games, and toys that offer healthy stimulation for young children. My mother, a kindergarten teacher, even said that she’s seen improvement in kids who had these educational programs versus kids who haven’t. “They seem more eager to learn and they seem to actually have fun while their learning since they associate counting with fun characters like Elmo”. Not only are these shows incredibly helpful to young children, but they’re also incredibly diverse. Many people who were born in the 90s know about shows such as Static Shock, El Tigre, and Samurai Jack. All three of these shows portray people of color in an accurate, nonstereotyping manner. Static Shock was a black superhero with a white sidekick, El Tigre was a Latino superhero with an art style largely influenced by sugar skulls, and Samurai Jack has a very accurate representation of ancient Japanese culture, with a non-offensively coded Asian male as the lead. These shows from the past offered a chance for people to relate to characters by offering them a character that looks like the person watching, or someone the person knows. Granted you can’t have every body type, race, gender, or sexuality expressed in mainstream media, but there has been a severe lack of true diversity in programming. The article, “Trump Budget Cuts Funding For the Arts, Humanities, And Public Media” state's, “Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be cut to

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