I'm not sure how long it'll take to process the idea that Reading Rainbow is officially off the air because no one will fund it anymore. Granted, I haven't watched that show in earnest since, I don't know, 1993, and haven't even caught it while channel surfing since, um, 2008 (hey, if you just happened to turn on PBS while LeVar Burton was having a storytelling adventure, don't try to pretend you wouldn't just happen to leave the TV on too). Getting the axe now makes this show only one year older than I am, and I'm quite attached to it. It's Reading freakin' Rainbow! How can it not be on the air forever and ever until LeVar Burton passes from old age and no one dare fill his hallowed shoes, like with Mr. Rogers or Mr. Dressup?
The rationale reported in the NPR article is that PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, etc., are finding they have to focus on funding shows which teach kids the technical process of how to read; that we no longer have the luxury of funding a show that teaches kids how to read in the Dead Poets Society sense. I can't cognitively grasp the idea that so many kids are apparently not learning the mechanics of reading in, you know, school, that 26 years of teaching kids why to read and how to love it has to be tossed aside like a bag of mouldy tangerines.
I'm speaking as an outsider here, because I never had a problem with literacy, I don't have a kid to teach, and I'm not a social scientist or think-tank researcher. My mom says I started reading off the page when I was 3, and my childhood is rife with memories of being told to put down that book and not read at the table, at the social gathering, at the...you get the drift. I know very well that there are a lot of terrible, completely ineffective teachers blighting the educational landscape who have screwed up countless lives and couldn't find literacy (or other subjects) with a hunting dog and a Ouija board. But where did I get that snappy line about hunting dogs and Ouija boards? Not from a book, my friends! From Babylon 5 ! Ergo, TV plays a critical role in teaching children insufferably witty, self-satisfied language skills! I think I've proven my point.
Seriously, though. How did such a huge country get so dependent on public TV as a source of basic primary education that the Powers That Be need to ditch Reading Rainbow just because it's not hooked on phonics?
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