Reading Rainbow‘s opening always made me wish I could be transformed into a book-like animation as a kid:
I’m sure in some wonderful Reading Rainbow butterfly-effect way it awakened pieces of my imagination I never could have unlocked by myself. The one disappointing part of the show (but also the bittersweet-best) is when they would rapidfire-interview a bunch of kids who would book report on stories with interesting urban/suburban settings and problems – but never reveal the ending. And I would fall for it every time thinking they’d give me the ending – the solutions to the story’s problem. I was never able to rediscover the book to find out for myself because who can remember a book title (especially for something you never fully read yourself). Even after writing the title down I would just lose the note. And I needed those solutions… to problems I didn’t have [or even understand] yet 
It was one of those shows that felt like it was made especially for you because it aired when you were away from school, at home, sick 
PBS: putting education into my schedule at times when I shouldn’t be getting one. Maybe I can find a bunch of episodes to trigger my memory with certain books I missed out on so I can follow-up on their endings. Found the first episode on the SA forums
The very first episode of Reading Rainbow. The featured book is Tight Times, about a family trying to cope with money problems. Holy cow! LeVar Burton predicted both the recession and the reason his show would stop airing!
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/…oryId=112312561
After 26 years of being on the air, Reading Rainbow’s last episode runs today. The reason why?
quote:
… because no one — not the station, not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show’s broadcast rights.
Even more disturbing, the reasons why is only due in part to the economic depression. The rest is due to a shift in the view of what educational programming should be.
quote:
The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling.
Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that’s not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.
“Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read,” Grant says. “You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read.”
I agree with the idea that kids need to be taught how to read outside of school. But it’s much more difficult to get them to understand the why, why reading is important and why reading should be enjoyable. Shows that can balance both the how and the why are wonderful, but a show should not be cut from funding because it focuses more on the why than the how.
I have a 3 year old and every day we watch “Between the Lions” together. He’s picked up a great deal of information on how to read, phonics and word combinations. He’s picking up on reading rather rapidly, which is wonderful. And his father and I are both voracious readers, so my son will likely enjoy reading as well. But not as many parents are interested in getting their kids to read for fun.
I teach Literature and Composition at a community college and deal with adults who hate reading and hate writing, completely missing the benefits of being able to read and comprehend. The more you read, the better your reading comprehension becomes. The better your reading comprehension, the better your chances of being able to teach yourself different skills.
By cutting Reading Rainbow from the Public Broadcasting line-up, fewer and fewer children are going to begin to understand the joy in reading.
LeVar Burton is on twitter now with over 1.1 million followers (but hasn’t updated in 10 days so maybe this is canceled too). I bet a podcast site where kids review their favorite books for other kids to watch would work well in this internet-information age. I would go to it myself if they reviewed the same books that Reading Rainbow featured, and then provided an additional spoiler video link… that gave away those solution endings.
Update: Levar updates his twitter account.
