Rachel S.

Loved me some bill nye and magic school bus.

I learned math and strategy from The Price Is Right

I learned the US states and most of the countries from Animaniacs!

Mr. Wizard's World, 3-2-1 Contact, and Square One Television all made a substantial impact on my early life. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that I saw these early, before the stuff I was being taught in school was presented as a series of well-define topic silos, so math, science, and engineering didn't feel like "School" yet. They just felt like activities a person could engage in at will whenever they wanted, and seeing kids on TV doing that sort of stuff further normalized doing so myself for my own reasons, rather than it being a chore imposed on me by adults.

I ended up re-enacting a bunch of the stuff on those shows, but the one that made the strongest impression on me was the "cut a hole in a piece of paper that you can jump through" trick (which I'm sure predates Mr. Wizard's demonstration, but that's where I first saw it). I saw this "trick" performed, immediately understood the explanation given in the show, and did it myself with some craft paper I had handy. It felt like a major epiphany at the time, kind of a "baby's first topological idea", and it prompted a whole obsessive deep dive into library books about related topics. A direct consequence of that flurry of reading was that M.C. Escher was my favorite artist for most of my childhood.

Actual answer that sounds like a joke: Captain Planet
Also Eureeka's Castle was hell of formative socially if not directly 'educational'.

Learned a lot about myself from Totally Spies!

But actually, Cyber Chase and The Magic School Bus probably did teach me a lot.

seconding magic school bus and bill nye. other program that came to mind was Zoom, on PBS. Feel like they had some cool practical segments, like cooking snacks and basic science fair-type projects, but my memory is hazy.

🦨The way Dexter said "laboratory" or Tigger said "vegetables" made us know that some words have secret letters in them, like library, and we should look out for them

3-2-1 contact

Magic school bus, hands down. I even made.my mom tape it on VHS so I could rewatch it in case I forgot how baking worked or what the immune system does

Little Einstein taught me a lot about music 🎶

i loved cyberchase when i was like 5-6

This is maybe a bit more indirect, but I think I learned some good life lessons from courage the cowardly dog as a kid.

I didn't have tv growing up for the most part, but my answer is Wishbone and it's not close

cyberchase taught me valuable lessons about maths. episode that has always stuck with me is the one that teaches bar graphs, and by extension how to spot distortions of statistics.

Animaniacs and it's not even close. Here's a skit about pigeons who are the Goodfellas; the dialogue is jokey but consists of nothing but references to R-rated mobster movies you will not see for decades. Now watch an anthropomorphic nonbinary weasel recite every state and its capital, set to music. Now here's a tearjerking sketch about Polish people trying to survive the Nazi invasion during WW2. It's probably hard for zoomers and younger to believe, but this is an actual children's TV show that existed in the 90s

Beakman's World taught me science and was a major influence on my sense of humor.

another vote for magic school bus — I watched the show religiously, played the games obsessively and collected every book I could find. Really grateful that my parents’ weird blend of old fashioned conservative beliefs and modern ones tipped towards letting me have the science show even though it used the words “millions of years ago”

Cyberchase was really fucking good

I'm not from the US so my perspective is probably a little different but I learnt a shitton from watching "Die Sendung mit der Maus" on German public tv every sunday, it's a show that answers kid's questions and shows a lot of "how it's made" style stuff but also breaks down stuff like "how does a computer work" with a bunch of humans standing for the different components or "how does a solar panel produce electricity" with humans holding colored balls

The same animators behind Animaniacs made another cartoon called "Histeria!" which was about a group of kids doing skits and singing about history, and it was one of my favorite shows. They had a great song about the origins of the spice trade that I still sing to this day. "People wanted pepper on their food, oh yeah..."

Also a handful of episodes in the first season of The Fairly OddParents were educational for some reason? Like there's one where Timmy just goes back in time for no reason to the colonial America and Benedict Arnold is the villain of the week.

People have listed a lot of the shows I watched, but I also wanted to mention Scientific American Frontiers hosted by Alan Alda and early aughts Nova. I'm sure not all of the episodes have aged well, but they definitely succeeded at making technical discussions interesting for kids.

I am pretty sure it was on Arthur, but there was a segment at the end of an episode that talked about chicken egg production. It talked about how female chickens will lay eggs, even without a male chicken.
When I got older and started keeping chickens I was surprised to learn that not everyone knows this. I have been asked several times how do I get eggs if I don't have any roosters.

I know I watched a lot of PBS as a young one, but I don't really remember it. I remember really liking Reading Lion and I remembered a song about how easy it is to confuse b and d.

Also I was in Kindergarten when Dora started. Everyone in my class thought it was the shit and felt so cool when we could say a word in Spanish.

Square One, for actual math information and skills that I can directly point to, and use even today (house numbers and sides of the street). This got me in trouble at school, as I'd learned all about things like negative numbers and decimals and fractions long before I was "supposed" to. I had teachers that generally knew what to do with me, but one just go so exasperated that she sent me to the office for "not doing what she asked" constantly on my math work. I still sing "less than zero" and had that in my head constantly watching the Olympic divers.

Mr. Wizard, for Cool Science Tricks and the reasons behind them (cutting a piece of paper so you can step through it, glue from flour, the reaction behind the essential baking soda & vinegar volcano, etc). It also taught me about the scientific method and how to go about figuring stuff out.

Animaniacs for general knowledge (e.g. the countries of the world song, what things are considered reference-able culture by my mom's generation, that WWII was really bad for a lot of people in various ways that are still felt today).

I know I watched Beakman's World and Bill Nye, but I don't remember learning overly much anything new from them, not that Mr. Wizard hadn't already touched on, anyway.

Cosmos for cool space stuff. Who has black hole facts in 1st grade? ME

Beyond 2000, a show on Discovery Channel about emerging technology. I can't say that it taught me anything specific, except how the tech industry worked in general and how most innovations will run into some snag when going from bespoke to mass production.

Cro was a smart boy, had a lot on the ball, but the family that took him in was totally neanderthal; Cro was just a memory of his mammoth friend named Phil, who was found by the scientist Dr. C and Mike in the arctic chill...

Cro was a nested frame narrative where a talking mammoth revived from the last ice age tells stories about Cro's adventures to the then-current-time POC woman scientist and POC boy sidekick as they try to solve some problem, his flashbacks dovetail with similar problems encountered by the ancient intelligent mammoth pack and stupid mostly adult humans except Cro, who as the theme song indicates, was a smart boy

i learned about boyancy and many other things via this show's very funny and forth wall breaking antics

it is also super weird that most of the characters are dead

me not scared. me just gonna die.

- Ogg, from "Escape from Mung Island"

i learned a lot from educational programming, and there is probably even more that i do not realize that i first encountered in various kids TV shows

purely in terms of long-term retention, probably schoolhouse rock. songs as mnemonics always worked really well on me (see also the blues clues planets song, which I still sing in my head in the rare but surprisingly extant cases where I need to remember the order the planets are in. like, I know without the song, and yet)

I watched so much mid-2000s PBS as a kid! Curious George, Martha Speaks, WordGirl, Fetch!, all that stuff. Also caught a lot of Magic School Bus through cable.

The "most educational" award probably goes to Bill Nye, which was a mainstay for substitute teachers. Though I didn't watch that through live broadcasts, so I don't know if that counts for this discussion...

already seen a bunch of other good pbs shows here (yay square one!) so:

Long Ago And Far Away absolutely defined my entire aesthetic sensibility and the standard I have for animation. having a show just playing the best worldwide short cartoons, just the most gorgeous and inventive stuff, really shaped me.

Mathica's Math Shop is, probably not gonna be remembered by anyone else? but was a cute show that genuinely taught me a bunch of math concepts early and also was maybe my first encounter, weirdly enough, with the idea of recurring plot lines and character arcs in the context of a mostly episodic show, like having to piece together what The Story was based on occasional out of order broadcasts of Story Relevant episodes lol

Newton's Apple was a science program that I remember picking up a lot of important concepts from, stuff like "global warming" for example. most of all I remember they had an episode on disease and the immune system and had a whole segment on HIV. it scared the bejesus out of me conceptually but they also were very firm about debunking myths about how it spreads, talking about it as something that had some treatment options (though at the time not life saving ones), and humanizing HIV+ people. I think it was probably the first time in my life I saw a visibly queer, gender non conforming person. I'm really thankful for that honestly.

Secret Life of Machines taught me that you can rewrite a 5/4 jazz song into a 4/4 reggae song and no one can stop you. this show probably shaped a lot of my sense of aesthetics and humor too lol even though I was literally so young when I watched it that I mostly don't remember it

Beakman's World! Science delivered through the medium of "eccentric in green lab coat" and "man in giant rat suit." Learned quite a lot about bacteria, surface tension, bubbles (glycerin!), microscopes (Antony van Leeuwenhoek!), and the long-term sleep cycles of snails. Also featuring copious amounts of Mark Mothersbaugh.

Sesame Street and Mr Rodgers taught me a lot, definitely retained a bunch of things from Mr. Wizard and Pinwheel as well.

not really a kids show but I watched a lot of NOVA in public school in Kentucky, and I always appreciated the program

lol, my dad worked at Public Broadcasting so I feel like I'm cheating at this question.
But it was probably either Magic School Bus or Bill Nye. Square One and Electric Company were great, but they mostly went over my head when I was young and were off the air when I was older.

Cyberchase, Zoom, and Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman taught me a lot, mostly about STEM stuff. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood too, just, in general. Sesame Street is a classic, Zoboomafoo and Wild Kratts taught me a lot about nature, Wordgirl, The Electric Company, Reading Rainbow, and Between the Lions were good literacy and vocabulary lessons too

Captain Planet with Andreas Malm as a showrunner would be a banger.

jesus christ do I have a type

🐺 I learned some cool stuff about liquids from Bull Nye!!