Save Reading Rainbow
Published August 31, 2009 @ 09:51PM PT
Reading Rainbow host Levar Burton, via: GPN/Nebraska ETV Network and WNED Buffalo
[Join the action to Save Reading Rainbow!]
One of the most beloved and long-running children's shows in the history of television will leave the airwaves next year. According to NPR, the 26-year running Reading Rainbow will be discontinued because the Public Broadcasting Service, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Department of Education aren't willing to put up funding for a show that teaches children why to read, but not how to read. It would be an incredible waste to lose a show that has instilled a love of reading and education for millions because of a new fad in educational analysis.
The basic idea, according to NPR, is that research has suggested that in the literacy fight, basic phonics are the so called first line. According to the vice president for children's programming at PBS, Linda Simensky, Reading Rainbow began at a time when the key question for educators was "how do we get kids to want to read." Since then, priorities have changed, and with it, the place for a show that takes the luxury (to use NPR's word) to focus on helping children develop a passion for reading has evaporated.
I am not an enemy of the current Department of Education. I am excited about new approaches and experimentation with the ways that we educate the next generation. I think there are incredible opportunities in the for-profit market for software, web portals, and other businesses that open educational access more broadly.
But I am against an infatuation with data that doesn't recognize that there are certain elements of education impossible to capture with numbers and quantitative students. Would we deny that a love of reading is a vital -- the vital -- ingredient to helping people develop a life long interest in books? Would we deny that just because you know how to do something, that doesn't mean you like or will want to do it?
Education is not just about imparting knowledge into empty vessels. Education is about providing skills yes, but it's also about sharing the values of a society, incentivizing positive behaviors, and helping people understand themselves in the context of a larger world.
This matters for social entrepreneurs for a couple reasons. First, social entrepreneurship and innovation is about finding solutions that work. But it's about doing so in a way that recognize the full complexity of social problems, and indeed, rebelling against reductive thinking. Second, social entrepreneurship is about unleashing the innovative capacity of everyone to change the world. Reading - not the mechanics of it but the act of trying to assemble and interpret new knowledge - fundamentally changes our sense of ourselves in the world. We should be worried about trends which would undervalue the institutions that threaten that sort of viewpoint expansion.
For me, and I would imagine for many readers of this blog, Reading Rainbow was a vital part of childhood. It treated children with respect and excitement. It, combined with my parents' constant encouragement to read, created a love of reading that I've kept through college and which has a dramatic impact on my ability to understand and synthesize the world around me.
It's PBS' imperative to decide what it's obligation to the fight against illiteracy must be. Maybe it's appropriate for them to fill a gap left by parents and schools either incapable of or unwilling to provide basic early literacy skills. But it makes me worried to see one of the most treasured educational programs cast aside in favor of something more skills based. It makes me wonder if in the process of looking for what works, we've forgotten what matters.
[Mad? Join the action to Save Reading Rainbow!]
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Comments (2)
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Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.
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I grew up with Reading Rainbow as well (I was born in 1980).
What a sad, sad day for education. Reading Rainbow and LeVar Burton were something I cherished as a child. Hearing the children give book reviews at the end of the episode was wonderful - if I heard a story I might like, I wrote down the title of the book and would look for it during my weekly trip to the public library with my mother.
What can I do to save Reading Rainbow for future generations? Can anything be done at a local level with my PBS station?
Posted by Jessica Smedley on 09/01/2009 @ 07:13AM PT
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Received this form-letter response from PBS upon submitting the petition:
Dear Mr. Berry:
Thank you for contacting PBS about READING RAINBOW.
Since its premiere on PBS KIDS in 1983, READING RAINBOW has helped children build lasting relationships with books at home and in the classroom. However, production ended on READING RAINBOW several years ago, and viewership for the show has declined dramatically. As broadcast rights are set to expire, PBS will no longer feed READING RAINBOW after August 28, 2009, and all broadcast rights will discontinue after that date. Off-air educational rights for READING RAINBOW are still currently available for the classroom and remain in effect for a year following the last broadcast of each episode.
Nationally-recognized stories authored by children for the Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest will be available online until December 2009, at which point the READING RAINBOW Web site on pbskids.org will end. PBS and member station WNED, producer of READING RAINBOW, are discussing plans to continue the contest on a national level as well as plans to build a literacy Web site for school age children.
PBS KIDS is committed to leveraging the power of media for literacy education and focusing financial resources on new and current productions. PBS children's media reaches 14 million children on broadcast and 9 million unique visitors per month online with top-rated, award-winning series.
Through new series and Web sites created in alignment with the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education's National Reading Panel of 2000's research assessment on reading instruction (http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/), several PBS KIDS series are dedicated to fulfilling these research-based reading practices, including SUPER WHY! (www.pbskids.org/superwhy) and the all-new THE ELECTRIC COMPANY (http://pbskids.org/electriccompany/), among many others.
In addition, two recent studies funded by the Department of Education on SUPER WHY! proved that children, especially those from low-income families, are learning core early literacy skills from the TV series and its educational support materials. For more information about PBS literacy programs, please visit PBSKids.org (http://pbskids.org/read/), PBSParents.org (http://www.pbs.org/parents/readinglanguage/) and PBSTeachers.org (http://www.pbs.org/teachers/readlanguage/) for new and updated resources.
Thank you again for contacting PBS. We appreciate your interest in our programs.
Sincerely,
Felicia
PBS Viewer Services
----------------------------------------------------
To which I responded:
Felicia,
First of all, I came from a low-income family, and spent my youth learning *HOW* to read in school, and discovering *WHY* I should read from Mr. LeVar Burton. You insult my intelligence, and the latent intelligence of every child living in various states of welfare. How dare you?
Leave the mechanics to the schools, and bring the imagination to our homes. I pay my taxes so that SUPER WHY! shouldn't have to exist. And disregarding a show which has been so highly awarded, revered, proven, and EFFECTIVE makes you look like agents of retardation. You can't teach kids by asking them questions and then giving them the answers. All you're educating, is dependence on the system, instead of the independent thought and imagination that shows like Reading Rainbow have encouraged. And speaking of the Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, what are your plans to replace it? Will there be a SUPER WHY! Letter Pronunciation and Color Identification contest instead?
We are damned and damned again if such programming decisions are left to the perverted arena of statistical analysis. Correlation is not causation, and you would know that if you had read some of the books that Reading Rainbow introduced.
I'm willing to put my money forward to save this show. It's not a lot, but I would rather be poor and give my infant son a future with Reading Rainbow, than without. But that doesn't matter to your board of directors, does it? The decision is made, and no efforts to implore the masses performed. The procession is queued.
Mournfully,
David Berry
Posted by David Berry on 09/01/2009 @ 10:42AM PT
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