With many of these final specials, it becomes clear what ABC was losing business to. This one is fairly typical, but others were just talk shows disguised as Afterschool Specials. "Oprah Winfrey moderates a panel of teens on Issue X" was the plot of several in the 90's. It was pretty transparent and the signs of cancellation were obvious.
One is Whoopi Goldberg interviewing country singer Bonnie Raitt. That's it. I don't know what life lesson one was expected to learn from it, but the title was "Bonnie Raitt Has Something To Talk About."