Save Reading Rainbow

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.

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