11 ms·

“Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps

345 points by arbesman 1y ago

aspenmayer 1y ago
That was a well done show for kids. LeVar Burton can read a book better than me, and I am not ashamed to admit it. He made learning accessible, fun, and cool.
- twoodfin 1y ago
  He also has that rare Fred Rogers-esque gift of talking in a way children understand without talking down to them. Not unheard of in today’s tap-obsessed world of YouTube Kids & streaming apps, but much harder to find.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    He’s a compelling speaker and onscreen talent, I agree. He’s using his superpowers for good, whatever they are. Being able to connect through a screen wasn’t normalized back then. Educational content needed that personal touch. I think it makes all the difference.
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    Adults, too. I might not know what an inverse-tachyon pulse is, but thanks to his convincing demeanor I understand that it could cause a localized spatial distortion.
  - chang1 1y ago
    As a child in the late 80s/early 90s, I remember watching Star Trek TNG as new episodes were coming out, and also watching Reading Rainbow (I loved both shows). The episode where Reading Rainbow visited the Star Trek TNG set was one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRz_qpgD-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRz_qpgD-0
    - Verdex 1y ago
      I've got some sort of weak facial blindness, so I did not connect that Burton and La Forge were the same person. As a child learning that two of your favorite people were in fact the same person was pretty mind blowing for me.
- jimbob45 1y ago
  I was bored to tears and I read more than the average kid. I liked the aesthetic though and I wanted to like it because it seemed wholesome. I’ve always suspected RR is one of those shows that everyone knows they should like so they all talk it up as if they did like it. Kinda like Rust.
  - plemer 1y ago
    Or maybe many did genuinely enjoy RR but you just weren’t the target audience? If it was created to combat the summer reading slump, it likely wasn’t targeting already avid readers. FWIW, though, my experience was similar to yours: I read a ton and loved the feel of the show, but the actual content was a little slow.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      I agree that it’s the feel of the show. I grew up with 3 free to air channels, and one of them was a PBS station. The content was better than the competition or the VHS tape collection, or replaying one of the video games.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    I genuinely liked it even though I could read fine. It was an excuse to use the tv when I might not have a good reason to use it instead of someone else otherwise and I enjoyed the content well enough even if I was a couple years older than the intended audience. The public broadcasting shows of that era were weirdly good imo, with Mr Rogers and Shirley Lewis doing puppets, but wholesome too. Ghost Writer was ahead of its time and deserves a post of its own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter_(1992_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter_(1992_TV_series) > The series revolves around a multiethnic group of friends from Brooklyn who solve neighborhood crimes and mysteries as a team of youth detectives with the help of a ghost named Ghostwriter. Ghostwriter can communicate with children only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences. > Ghostwriter producer and writer Kermit Frazier revealed in a 2010 interview that Ghostwriter was a runaway slave during the American Civil War. He taught other slaves how to read and write and was killed by slave catchers and their dogs. His spirit was kept in the book that Jamal discovers and opens in the pilot episode, freeing the ghost. Wishbone has costumes and a dog for your dramatic re-enactments of books with a dog actor in the lead role. This is crazy town, and I’m here for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishbone_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishbone_(TV_series)
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  > LeVar Burton can read a book better than me, and I am not ashamed to admit it. This is a weird comment. He’s a professional actor. I hope he does
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    He makes the hard thing look easy. This wasn’t a backhanded compliment but a genuine one. He isn’t acting per se, but he does voice act the stories. It was audiobooks and ASMR sorta before those things were cool. He does a fantastic job with the words on the page and also goes on-site to film IRL things from the books. It’s a simple premise and it works. It doesn’t have to be surprising to be enjoyable and engaging.
    - pfannkuchen 1y ago
      Why are you looking for a hyper stimulus? Man didn’t evolve in an environment where stories were told by people who’d won a massive intertribe tournament of story telling ability. Stories were told by family. If child requires hyper stimulus to be engaged in this area, suspect other hyper stimulus present.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        > Why are you looking for a hyper stimulus? Man didn’t evolve in an environment where stories were told by people who’d won a massive intertribe tournament of story telling ability. Stories were told by family. > If child requires hyper stimulus to be engaged in this area, suspect other hyper stimulus present. Reading Rainbow is the opposite of a hyperstimulus compared to most tv programs, let alone “educational” tv programming. I wasn’t seeking a hyperstimulus. You don’t even know me. I could read and write before kindergarten, which was my first schooling outside the home.
        pfannkuchen 1y ago
        > compared to most tv programs Modern media is so replete with hyper stimuli that it is often hard to see where the line is between what is evolutionarily congruent and what is greater. I don’t see how knowing you is relevant. This is my position on what most people do. Either you have a different viewpoint on this than the mainstream and yet arrived at the very same conclusions, or I essentially am familiar with your viewpoint in this area. What have I gotten wrong?
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Whatever works, I guess. It made a difference, although it was corny somewhere between `Punky Brewster` and `Captain Planet`. Vintage `Sesame Street` is legit cool.
xrd 1y ago
[flagged]
- heckintime 1y ago
  [flagged]
- seizethecheese 1y ago
  Why post this if you know it'll be downvoted? Seriously not in the spirit of a good message board participant.
  - fuckdangsasshol 1y ago
    [dead]
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Reminds of another 1980s reading incentive thing, tho during the schoolyear not summer: Pizza Hut's Book It! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It!
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  Read books, get free pizza you want, not the pizza they serve at school. Whoever invented this is a genius. I still regret losing the holographic Book It! pin I had, but I can probably find another one if I look.
  - RandallBrown 1y ago
    It was sort of Ronald Reagan that invented it.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      It seems that Reagan was involved from very early, but Book It! was created by Pizza Hut folks: > Book It! was conceived in 1984 during a dinner with Art Gunther, President of Pizza Hut, and Bud Gates, SVP of Marketing at Pizza Hut, as a way to help Gunther's son read more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It%21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It%21 This is not at all to discount how Reagan championed Book It! specifically. He also worked on other literacy projects, and declared 1987 the Year of the Reader. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-15-vw-2399-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-15-vw-2399-s... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250512024034/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-15-vw-2399-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20250512024034/https://www.latim... > Like many simple plans, this one was hard to realize. Beginning last January, Gunther met several times with Secretary of Education William Bennett, representatives of President Reagan’s Task Force on Private Sector Initiative, and teachers’ and school administrators’ groups. With input from the educators, Gunther and his associate Sharon Knight designed a program. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-5584-year-reader-1987 https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-5... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250515204005/https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-5584-year-reader-1987 https://web.archive.org/web/20250515204005/https://www.reaga... https://www.flickr.com/photos/109483711@N02/13567960943/in/pool-2621597@N21 https://www.flickr.com/photos/109483711@N02/13567960943/in/p... | https://web.archive.org/web/20150324235000/https://www.flickr.com/photos/109483711@N02/13567960943/in/pool-2621597@N21 https://web.archive.org/web/20150324235000/https://www.flick... Considering how involved he was in the project and how early, I'm won't quibble on this point, since you said sort of invented. I don't see how it would have had the success it did without his involvement and efforts, but he didn't invent it strictly speaking.
etchalon 1y ago
It sure was neat when people aspired to help kids learn instead of being completely focused on them not learning the wrong thing.
- fsckboy 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Larrikin 1y ago
    Mr. Fuckboy, why are you pretending like the very same government funded network that created shows like Reading Rainbow isn't being gutted by politics. I assume with your user name this is a serious opinion to be taken seriously.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - monkeyelite 1y ago
    > while children have been fed increasing amounts of what you think they should know by people you agree with, their actually reading scores have been declining and declining and declining Why are you having a disguised political debate? Please state claims clearly.
    - fsckboy 1y ago
      >Please state claims clearly. i don't know what you mean, you didn't come out and say it
    - fknorangesite 1y ago
      I think they're doing that because they took the GP's bait. etchalon was doing the same thing.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  I think if you back and watch these 90s PBS shows you’ll find they are also very overt in promoting their ideas.
mproud 1y ago
Butterfly in the Sky, documentary on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81750412?s=i&trkid=258593161&vlang=en&trg=cp https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81750412?s=i&trkid=25859316...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
throwing_away 1y ago
It really felt like propaganda as a kid. Made me think reading was probably a scam.
- esseph 1y ago
  Sure was buddy Big Book out to get u (How the fuck did you know what "propaganda" was before you could even read btw?)
  - throwing_away 1y ago
    That was just the vibe. It was mandatory watching by the state education program. It had product placement and a clear message. I mean, I feel like it would take more education to not see it as propaganda. I didn't like The Magic Schoolbus either though. Same reason. Oh, and Scholastic everything.
    - sitzkrieg 1y ago
      i felt like a lot of my teachers kept it handy in the "fucking hungover" pocket too
    - tclancy 1y ago
      Well, good work avoiding that scam. I guess. Does this make you Goofus or Gallanyt?
    - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
      I've only seen Magic School Bus as an adult, but I don't recall any product placement? They seem fun and educational - like Storybots. Only problem I have with those shows for kids is the lack of real people.
  - omeid2 1y ago
    I am always fascinated by this degree of assurance and absolute lack of scepticism. In what way, do you think, a show can have no room for critical viewing? Does being related to "reading or books" sufficient for such unquestionable and noncritical acceptance? Or was something else about it that makes it so cocksure good?
ajuc 1y ago
I wonder how many public libraries are there in US. In Poland every gmina (which is like a collection of a few villages - around 10k people and 10x10 km) have a public library. It's how I learned to love reading books - there was no internet yet, TV had like 3 channels, and I was on vacations bored to hell. So I went to the library and started borrowing random books. I didn't had to drive anywhere or ask my parents - it was just a short walk. I especially love the small countryside libraries where you don't need to ask the librarian for a book you want - you walk among the shelves and look for the books yourself. Back in 80s/90s most books in such libraries were hand-covered with gray packing-paper covers and had the author and title written by the librarian on that. So you didn't even had images on the cover to let you know what the book was about. It was a complete surprise every time. Through 3 summer vacations I went through half the library, even trying some Harlequins or "collected works of Lenin" :) (not a very good read BTW). Mostly I looked for fantasy and sci-fi, but that was like 5 shelves out of 50, so I tried everything eventually. And I learnt to love reading ever since.
- RandallBrown 1y ago
  The US public library system is very big. There are over 17,000 libraries and that doesn't include the almost 100,000 libraries that are in schools. My city (Seattle, a pretty large US city) has 27 public libraries. I only live a few blocks from the closest one but could fairly easily walk to at least 2 more.
  - ajuc 1y ago
    > 17,000 libraries It doesn't seem like "A lot" for a country the size of US TBH. Poland has 7541 public libraries. Which is 1 per 41 km^2, but of course big cities have many libraries, so the actual distance is larger in the countryside. But it's a number. 17000 libraries in US is like one per 580 km^2. And yes every school has one too, there's 35 000 schools. But many of these are very small libraries that mostly carry mandatory lectures for school + some classic books. In my village the school library sucked. I lived in a village of 500 people and had a library within 5 minute walk.
    - 1y ago
CSMastermind 1y ago
Growing up Wishbone connected with me a lot more. Looking back on the list of Reading Rainbow books: https://knowtea.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/reading-rainbow-book-list1.pdf https://knowtea.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/rea... I can't say I've read many of them. With that said, I miss the trend of reading being so heavily emphasized in youth culture. Dolly Parton, free Pizza Hut, the accelerated reader program. I'm really grateful I grew up in the 90s.
- brendoelfrendo 1y ago
  Wishbone was a good show, but I think it occupies a different niche. Wishbone was about adapting the classics, and each episode was more of a production vs Reading Rainbow, which was formatted more to introduce kids to contemporary age-appropriate reading by focusing on picture books and excursions to thematically connected places. The only downside is that Wishbone holds up better to a modern rewatch in comparison, as opposed to how RR is very much of its time. But that's ok, too; someone needs to inspire kids to be adventurous with their reading so that they can go out and find the next classics.
- TimPC 1y ago
  Wishbone skewed slightly older. Reading the classics vs reading fairly basic books was definitely for a bit older audience.
dehrmann 1y ago
I'm torn. I see lots of value in reading (for both kids and adults!), but at some point, there also needs to be emphasis on doing.
- conception 1y ago
  porque no los dos?
- JimBlackwood 1y ago
  How do you propose that should look? The whole show is to motivate people to want to pick up a book, which to me sounds like an emphasis on doing. If you’d replace this with posters or shows that just say “READ A BOOK”, it would not be as effective.
- aspect0545 1y ago
  How is reading different from doing. This is about encouraging children to read, it’s a very active process. Maybe I‘m missing something?
  - xandrius 1y ago
    Just to argue reading vs doing: I know lots of heavy readers who can't absolutely do something new. They only read and read. On the other hand, doing is a totally different skillset. I'm not against reading just that it's very unlike doing something in general.
    - kjkjadksj 1y ago
      What does doing even mean here? Cutting the grass? Building a tree house?
  - resource_waste 1y ago
    No need to be black and white. Reading can be active, if I'm taking notes on nonfiction its a somewhat active process. Reading can be passive, if I'm cruising on a fiction book.
  - 1y ago
LongjumpingCat 1y ago
This brought back some memories. It’s kind of amazing how shows like this made reading feel fun instead of something you had to do. Just stories, imagination and a bit of magic, sometimes that’s all it takes to get a kid hooked on books.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  My mom read books during the day when my dad was at work. She'd tell my dad how hard she worked all day :-) I'd look over her shoulder and wonder how she made any sense out of the page full of text, as there were no pictures. I was fascinated by that, and was well motivated to learn to read. I was not allowed to watch TV beyond Daktari and Saturday morning cartoons. I hated that restriction, but in hindsight my parents made the right call. My dad would watch the news, but it was just gibberish to me. Later, I was not allowed to watch Green Acres. My parents said it was "rubbish". I did not see an episode of it till I went to college, and eagerly watched to see what I had been missing. I lasted 10 minutes - it was indeed rubbish.
- ljf 1y ago
  I have a strong feeling this account is a bot.
internet_points 1y ago
Norway has gamified summer reading https://sommerles.no/svar https://sommerles.no/svar It's quite popular in the first half of elementary school. You get points for registering read books (even if your parent read it for your, or audio books) and every week all the libraries put up a poster with this week's "code word" which you get points for typing into your profile, and whenever you level up ten levels you get a little prize you can pick up from the library (like a tiny toy, they had shark teeth one year)
- apwell23 1y ago
  > get points for registering read books > little prize you can pick up from the library I am not convinced that this is really motivating to kids. Don't they have tons' of toys at home an in the library to play with already. Why would they care about tiny shark teeth. Also i find the whole concept of 'read to get prize' cynical, cheap and manipulative. Don't want to manipulate my own child with these cheap tricks.
  - darthcircuit 1y ago
    Don’t underestimate the power of junk prizes. It’s how McDonald’s has gotten away with selling overpriced kids meals for decades. My kids love the novelty of garbage prize toys and while I think they are stupid, my kids get weirdly motivated by the promise of a trip to the dollar store.
  - whycome 1y ago
    manipulation or motivation? I suppose it's blurry. But, I think the point is that once you get the kids into the habit (or help them build the skill) they'll maintain it later on. Even encouraging reading together has societal value. So, maybe tiny shark teeth are good motivation - i have no idea. I'm not great at gauging what motivates kids. I still don't understand minecraft.
  - clintonb 1y ago
    Do you have children? You tell them something is animal-related and they tend to get really excited. Even more so for dinosaurs. My five year old has no concept of money, but he does have a concept of “new thing I can play with”. When I was a kid we had Book It. I got a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut for every 10(?) books I read. I read a lot of books! I also learned a lot along the way, and continued the habit of reading for fun through college.
kleiba 1y ago
The Christian library one town over from where we live does a "reading summer" event every year for the school holidays: kids who borrow books, read them, and write a small book report (2-3 sentences) for them enter a lottery and can win a small prize at the end of the holidays. And I believe every participants gets a certificate also. You'd think that this would not appeal to anyone, but they actually have a great turnout every year. Quite amazing actually.
- soco 1y ago
  Primary school kids in Switzerland used to (and maybe they still do) run class-wide "competitions" on the points earned on a similar reading challenge - Antolin if I remember correctly and my kid was quite in for it.
  - kleiba 1y ago
    Cool. Although my gut reaction would be that this mostly incentives the kids who already enjoy reading to read more, while the ones who are not great at reading know that they don't have a chance, so perhaps are discouraged from reading even more?!
  - gsck 1y ago
    We had something like this in our school called Accelerated Reader. Read books answer a quiz on it get points, best class/student got rewarded. Was really easy to game though. Our school library had a selection of books for what I can only assume were for special needs kids, really really simple books very few words with even fewer pages. These books rewarded an appropriate amount of points however so you got less, but you could easily bang out 20 of those books in one class and get a lot more points than you'd be rewarded for reading a real book. A few of us would just go over grab a bunch of those books and read through them in like 2 minutes and complete the quiz. They ended up not letting those books get used for AR
    - hombre_fatal 1y ago
      We had Accelerated Reader in my public school in Texas in the early 2000s. It was a pretty cool system. The lottery system described upstream is terrible. But with Accelerated Reader you would accumulate points that you could spend on things like the Scholastic Book Fair (buy books), slices of pizza for lunch, and various toy gadgets. Sometimes a teacher would sell some gimmick like a get out of homework ticket. Of course, you'd have to read a good number of books to receive any of these prizes. But you were always working towards something unlike a lottery system which isn't motivating at all.
mock-possum 1y ago
I’m sure I’m not the only one who fondly remembers their local public library’s “summer reading program” - read books, win prizes!
lenerdenator 1y ago
Sure am glad that we didn't just cut $9 billion in funding towards PBS and other public broadcasting institutions that aired Reading Rainbow.
- whycome 1y ago
  $9B?! Path to everything being private. Don't they want to also break up NOAA and National Weather to make them basically just data services? Private companies would then be the ones to publish it. Want to know the weather? Subscribe.
  - camblomquist 1y ago
    They aren't breaking up NOAA just for the sake of privatization, reliable weather reporting also makes it harder to ignore Climate Change. From Project 2025 "[NOAA offices] form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."
    - falcor84 1y ago
      > climate change alarm industry I would actually like to buy a climate change alarm clock
      - evilkorn 1y ago
        10 minutes till midnight. Put it right next to your nuclear clock
      - whycome 1y ago
        We just keep hitting snooze. That's how we got into this mess. (It's a future generation's problem, right?...)
        fknorangesite 1y ago
        > We just keep hitting snooze. Hah I wish - hitting snooze would at least push it back. We're just putting our heads under the pillow to try and ignore the blaring alarm.
duxup 1y ago
PBS is a national treasure.
AdmiralAsshat 1y ago
My favorite Doors song! [0] [0] https://youtu.be/--RYPHqbD50?si=YvldZg_xt--H3LSn https://youtu.be/--RYPHqbD50?si=YvldZg_xt--H3LSn
kochb 1y ago
LeVar Burton hosted a podcast marketed for adults where he read short stories. Though it ended last year, there are almost 200 episodes in the archive. He’s still been at work encouraging lifelong reading all these years later. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1244649384 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1...
david2ndaccount 1y ago
Summer reading programs are a band-aid on the problem that children shouldn’t have such a long summer break now that air conditioning is common. Spread the breaks out throughout the year if you want to maintain the same number of days off. All evidence shows the summer break is bad for children’s academic achievement (especially poor children), but it is viewed as a perk for the teachers so the teacher’s unions fight against questioning it.
- joshbetz 1y ago
  It is the only vacation most teachers get, so of course they fight against shortening it
  - bigfishrunning 1y ago
    The argument wasn't for shortening it, but for distributing it through the year. I have never in my adult life taken 10 consecutive weeks off, and 5 two-week breaks would still be very generous.
- lurkshark 1y ago
  Let’s say summer break is basically 3 months. I as a parent need to figure out childcare for that 3 month period at the beginning of summer. This is a much more time consuming endeavor than most would expect (or at least more than I expected). If you distribute those months throughout the year I need to repeat this process 3 different times, adding a bunch of overhead that could be spent on activities more beneficial to my family and kids. Edit: Adding that I realize the summer slowdown absolutely exists and has a disproportionate effect on those that don’t need another wrench thrown in their life. But just wanted to add a perspective that isn’t “teacher union boogeyman”.
- advisedwang 1y ago
  Maybe summer break also has some value for the joy it brings to children? Their lives shouldn't just be preparation for adulthood, it's worth making childhood enjoyable too.
- BrandonM 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
kjkjadksj 1y ago
I would always get a summer writing slump. Write nothing at all from june to august then I couldn’t read my own handwriting. My poor teachers.
xunil2ycom 1y ago
is this news?
- fknorangesite 1y ago
  Does it have to be?
karaterobot 1y ago
This article lavishes well-deserved praise on the intentions behind Reading Rainbow. I know I loved the show as a kid. But it seems like childhood reading scores were pretty much flat between 1983 and 2006, when the show was on the air: they only varied by 10-15 points on a 500 point scale[1], and there was no clear upward trend, it just sort of fluctuated. Reading for pleasure has never been lower among kids, either[2]. It doesn't seem to me that the mission of the show was achieved, if the mission was to make children read more books, and understand them more. Ultimately I think it ended up just being a pleasurable way to have kids get distracted by a friendly, positive TV show. My guess is that if you want to improve reading scores and habits, parents have to do more than just turn the dial to PBS. [1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9 https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9 [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/12/among-many-u-s-children-reading-for-fun-has-become-less-common-federal-data-shows/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/12/among-man...
- pinko 1y ago
  You may be right, but we have no idea what the scores would have been had Reading Rainbow not been on (i.e., maybe it held off a decline), so this isn't really meaningful one way or the other.
  - karaterobot 1y ago
    They didn't start tracking in 1983, the numbers I linked start in 1971. The trend line is pretty much the same from 1971 to 1983 as it is from 1983 to 2006. In any case, a skeptical person would not look at that graph and say that there was a successful effort to improve childhood literacy represented on it. It's true that we don't know the counterfactual: it's possible literacy would have plummeted precipitously starting in 1984 if Reading Rainbow hadn't been a bulwark. But I don't find that the most likely explanation, personally.
- orforforof 1y ago
  It would be more relevant to look at reading scores for children who specifically tuned into Reading Rainbow. I suspect the number of viewers was a small fraction of all children in the US, in which case the show's ability to affect the nationwide reading scores would be low. In other words, I don't believe the data you cited supports a conclusion that the show was ineffective at educating individual viewers.

345 points by arbesman 1y ago

That was a well done show for kids. LeVar Burton can read a book better than me, and I am not ashamed to admit it. He made learning accessible, fun, and cool.

twoodfin 1y ago
He also has that rare Fred Rogers-esque gift of talking in a way children understand without talking down to them. Not unheard of in today’s tap-obsessed world of YouTube Kids & streaming apps, but much harder to find.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  He’s a compelling speaker and onscreen talent, I agree. He’s using his superpowers for good, whatever they are. Being able to connect through a screen wasn’t normalized back then. Educational content needed that personal touch. I think it makes all the difference.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  Adults, too. I might not know what an inverse-tachyon pulse is, but thanks to his convincing demeanor I understand that it could cause a localized spatial distortion.
- chang1 1y ago
  As a child in the late 80s/early 90s, I remember watching Star Trek TNG as new episodes were coming out, and also watching Reading Rainbow (I loved both shows). The episode where Reading Rainbow visited the Star Trek TNG set was one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRz_qpgD-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRz_qpgD-0
  - Verdex 1y ago
    I've got some sort of weak facial blindness, so I did not connect that Burton and La Forge were the same person. As a child learning that two of your favorite people were in fact the same person was pretty mind blowing for me.
jimbob45 1y ago
I was bored to tears and I read more than the average kid. I liked the aesthetic though and I wanted to like it because it seemed wholesome. I’ve always suspected RR is one of those shows that everyone knows they should like so they all talk it up as if they did like it. Kinda like Rust.
- plemer 1y ago
  Or maybe many did genuinely enjoy RR but you just weren’t the target audience? If it was created to combat the summer reading slump, it likely wasn’t targeting already avid readers. FWIW, though, my experience was similar to yours: I read a ton and loved the feel of the show, but the actual content was a little slow.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    I agree that it’s the feel of the show. I grew up with 3 free to air channels, and one of them was a PBS station. The content was better than the competition or the VHS tape collection, or replaying one of the video games.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  I genuinely liked it even though I could read fine. It was an excuse to use the tv when I might not have a good reason to use it instead of someone else otherwise and I enjoyed the content well enough even if I was a couple years older than the intended audience. The public broadcasting shows of that era were weirdly good imo, with Mr Rogers and Shirley Lewis doing puppets, but wholesome too. Ghost Writer was ahead of its time and deserves a post of its own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter_(1992_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter_(1992_TV_series) > The series revolves around a multiethnic group of friends from Brooklyn who solve neighborhood crimes and mysteries as a team of youth detectives with the help of a ghost named Ghostwriter. Ghostwriter can communicate with children only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences. > Ghostwriter producer and writer Kermit Frazier revealed in a 2010 interview that Ghostwriter was a runaway slave during the American Civil War. He taught other slaves how to read and write and was killed by slave catchers and their dogs. His spirit was kept in the book that Jamal discovers and opens in the pilot episode, freeing the ghost. Wishbone has costumes and a dog for your dramatic re-enactments of books with a dog actor in the lead role. This is crazy town, and I’m here for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishbone_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishbone_(TV_series)
monkeyelite 1y ago
> LeVar Burton can read a book better than me, and I am not ashamed to admit it. This is a weird comment. He’s a professional actor. I hope he does
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  He makes the hard thing look easy. This wasn’t a backhanded compliment but a genuine one. He isn’t acting per se, but he does voice act the stories. It was audiobooks and ASMR sorta before those things were cool. He does a fantastic job with the words on the page and also goes on-site to film IRL things from the books. It’s a simple premise and it works. It doesn’t have to be surprising to be enjoyable and engaging.
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    Why are you looking for a hyper stimulus? Man didn’t evolve in an environment where stories were told by people who’d won a massive intertribe tournament of story telling ability. Stories were told by family. If child requires hyper stimulus to be engaged in this area, suspect other hyper stimulus present.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      > Why are you looking for a hyper stimulus? Man didn’t evolve in an environment where stories were told by people who’d won a massive intertribe tournament of story telling ability. Stories were told by family. > If child requires hyper stimulus to be engaged in this area, suspect other hyper stimulus present. Reading Rainbow is the opposite of a hyperstimulus compared to most tv programs, let alone “educational” tv programming. I wasn’t seeking a hyperstimulus. You don’t even know me. I could read and write before kindergarten, which was my first schooling outside the home.
      - pfannkuchen 1y ago
        > compared to most tv programs Modern media is so replete with hyper stimuli that it is often hard to see where the line is between what is evolutionarily congruent and what is greater. I don’t see how knowing you is relevant. This is my position on what most people do. Either you have a different viewpoint on this than the mainstream and yet arrived at the very same conclusions, or I essentially am familiar with your viewpoint in this area. What have I gotten wrong?
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Whatever works, I guess. It made a difference, although it was corny somewhere between `Punky Brewster` and `Captain Planet`. Vintage `Sesame Street` is legit cool.

xrd 1y ago

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heckintime 1y ago
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seizethecheese 1y ago
Why post this if you know it'll be downvoted? Seriously not in the spirit of a good message board participant.
- fuckdangsasshol 1y ago
  [dead]

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Reminds of another 1980s reading incentive thing, tho during the schoolyear not summer: Pizza Hut's Book It! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It!

aspenmayer 1y ago
Read books, get free pizza you want, not the pizza they serve at school. Whoever invented this is a genius. I still regret losing the holographic Book It! pin I had, but I can probably find another one if I look.
- RandallBrown 1y ago
  It was sort of Ronald Reagan that invented it.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    It seems that Reagan was involved from very early, but Book It! was created by Pizza Hut folks: > Book It! was conceived in 1984 during a dinner with Art Gunther, President of Pizza Hut, and Bud Gates, SVP of Marketing at Pizza Hut, as a way to help Gunther's son read more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It%21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It%21 This is not at all to discount how Reagan championed Book It! specifically. He also worked on other literacy projects, and declared 1987 the Year of the Reader. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-15-vw-2399-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-15-vw-2399-s... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250512024034/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-15-vw-2399-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20250512024034/https://www.latim... > Like many simple plans, this one was hard to realize. Beginning last January, Gunther met several times with Secretary of Education William Bennett, representatives of President Reagan’s Task Force on Private Sector Initiative, and teachers’ and school administrators’ groups. With input from the educators, Gunther and his associate Sharon Knight designed a program. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-5584-year-reader-1987 https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-5... | https://web.archive.org/web/20250515204005/https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-5584-year-reader-1987 https://web.archive.org/web/20250515204005/https://www.reaga... https://www.flickr.com/photos/109483711@N02/13567960943/in/pool-2621597@N21 https://www.flickr.com/photos/109483711@N02/13567960943/in/p... | https://web.archive.org/web/20150324235000/https://www.flickr.com/photos/109483711@N02/13567960943/in/pool-2621597@N21 https://web.archive.org/web/20150324235000/https://www.flick... Considering how involved he was in the project and how early, I'm won't quibble on this point, since you said sort of invented. I don't see how it would have had the success it did without his involvement and efforts, but he didn't invent it strictly speaking.

etchalon 1y ago

It sure was neat when people aspired to help kids learn instead of being completely focused on them not learning the wrong thing.

fsckboy 1y ago
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- Larrikin 1y ago
  Mr. Fuckboy, why are you pretending like the very same government funded network that created shows like Reading Rainbow isn't being gutted by politics. I assume with your user name this is a serious opinion to be taken seriously.
- deleted 1y ago
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- monkeyelite 1y ago
  > while children have been fed increasing amounts of what you think they should know by people you agree with, their actually reading scores have been declining and declining and declining Why are you having a disguised political debate? Please state claims clearly.
  - fsckboy 1y ago
    >Please state claims clearly. i don't know what you mean, you didn't come out and say it
  - fknorangesite 1y ago
    I think they're doing that because they took the GP's bait. etchalon was doing the same thing.
monkeyelite 1y ago
I think if you back and watch these 90s PBS shows you’ll find they are also very overt in promoting their ideas.

mproud 1y ago

Butterfly in the Sky, documentary on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81750412?s=i&trkid=258593161&vlang=en&trg=cp https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81750412?s=i&trkid=25859316...

deleted 1y ago
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throwing_away 1y ago

It really felt like propaganda as a kid. Made me think reading was probably a scam.

esseph 1y ago
Sure was buddy Big Book out to get u (How the fuck did you know what "propaganda" was before you could even read btw?)
- throwing_away 1y ago
  That was just the vibe. It was mandatory watching by the state education program. It had product placement and a clear message. I mean, I feel like it would take more education to not see it as propaganda. I didn't like The Magic Schoolbus either though. Same reason. Oh, and Scholastic everything.
  - sitzkrieg 1y ago
    i felt like a lot of my teachers kept it handy in the "fucking hungover" pocket too
  - tclancy 1y ago
    Well, good work avoiding that scam. I guess. Does this make you Goofus or Gallanyt?
  - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
    I've only seen Magic School Bus as an adult, but I don't recall any product placement? They seem fun and educational - like Storybots. Only problem I have with those shows for kids is the lack of real people.
- omeid2 1y ago
  I am always fascinated by this degree of assurance and absolute lack of scepticism. In what way, do you think, a show can have no room for critical viewing? Does being related to "reading or books" sufficient for such unquestionable and noncritical acceptance? Or was something else about it that makes it so cocksure good?

ajuc 1y ago

I wonder how many public libraries are there in US. In Poland every gmina (which is like a collection of a few villages - around 10k people and 10x10 km) have a public library. It's how I learned to love reading books - there was no internet yet, TV had like 3 channels, and I was on vacations bored to hell. So I went to the library and started borrowing random books. I didn't had to drive anywhere or ask my parents - it was just a short walk. I especially love the small countryside libraries where you don't need to ask the librarian for a book you want - you walk among the shelves and look for the books yourself. Back in 80s/90s most books in such libraries were hand-covered with gray packing-paper covers and had the author and title written by the librarian on that. So you didn't even had images on the cover to let you know what the book was about. It was a complete surprise every time. Through 3 summer vacations I went through half the library, even trying some Harlequins or "collected works of Lenin" :) (not a very good read BTW). Mostly I looked for fantasy and sci-fi, but that was like 5 shelves out of 50, so I tried everything eventually. And I learnt to love reading ever since.

RandallBrown 1y ago
The US public library system is very big. There are over 17,000 libraries and that doesn't include the almost 100,000 libraries that are in schools. My city (Seattle, a pretty large US city) has 27 public libraries. I only live a few blocks from the closest one but could fairly easily walk to at least 2 more.
- ajuc 1y ago
  > 17,000 libraries It doesn't seem like "A lot" for a country the size of US TBH. Poland has 7541 public libraries. Which is 1 per 41 km^2, but of course big cities have many libraries, so the actual distance is larger in the countryside. But it's a number. 17000 libraries in US is like one per 580 km^2. And yes every school has one too, there's 35 000 schools. But many of these are very small libraries that mostly carry mandatory lectures for school + some classic books. In my village the school library sucked. I lived in a village of 500 people and had a library within 5 minute walk.
  - 1y ago

CSMastermind 1y ago

Growing up Wishbone connected with me a lot more. Looking back on the list of Reading Rainbow books: https://knowtea.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/reading-rainbow-book-list1.pdf https://knowtea.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/rea... I can't say I've read many of them. With that said, I miss the trend of reading being so heavily emphasized in youth culture. Dolly Parton, free Pizza Hut, the accelerated reader program. I'm really grateful I grew up in the 90s.

brendoelfrendo 1y ago
Wishbone was a good show, but I think it occupies a different niche. Wishbone was about adapting the classics, and each episode was more of a production vs Reading Rainbow, which was formatted more to introduce kids to contemporary age-appropriate reading by focusing on picture books and excursions to thematically connected places. The only downside is that Wishbone holds up better to a modern rewatch in comparison, as opposed to how RR is very much of its time. But that's ok, too; someone needs to inspire kids to be adventurous with their reading so that they can go out and find the next classics.
TimPC 1y ago
Wishbone skewed slightly older. Reading the classics vs reading fairly basic books was definitely for a bit older audience.

dehrmann 1y ago

I'm torn. I see lots of value in reading (for both kids and adults!), but at some point, there also needs to be emphasis on doing.

conception 1y ago
porque no los dos?
JimBlackwood 1y ago
How do you propose that should look? The whole show is to motivate people to want to pick up a book, which to me sounds like an emphasis on doing. If you’d replace this with posters or shows that just say “READ A BOOK”, it would not be as effective.
aspect0545 1y ago
How is reading different from doing. This is about encouraging children to read, it’s a very active process. Maybe I‘m missing something?
- xandrius 1y ago
  Just to argue reading vs doing: I know lots of heavy readers who can't absolutely do something new. They only read and read. On the other hand, doing is a totally different skillset. I'm not against reading just that it's very unlike doing something in general.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    What does doing even mean here? Cutting the grass? Building a tree house?
- resource_waste 1y ago
  No need to be black and white. Reading can be active, if I'm taking notes on nonfiction its a somewhat active process. Reading can be passive, if I'm cruising on a fiction book.
- 1y ago

LongjumpingCat 1y ago

This brought back some memories. It’s kind of amazing how shows like this made reading feel fun instead of something you had to do. Just stories, imagination and a bit of magic, sometimes that’s all it takes to get a kid hooked on books.

WalterBright 1y ago
My mom read books during the day when my dad was at work. She'd tell my dad how hard she worked all day :-) I'd look over her shoulder and wonder how she made any sense out of the page full of text, as there were no pictures. I was fascinated by that, and was well motivated to learn to read. I was not allowed to watch TV beyond Daktari and Saturday morning cartoons. I hated that restriction, but in hindsight my parents made the right call. My dad would watch the news, but it was just gibberish to me. Later, I was not allowed to watch Green Acres. My parents said it was "rubbish". I did not see an episode of it till I went to college, and eagerly watched to see what I had been missing. I lasted 10 minutes - it was indeed rubbish.
ljf 1y ago
I have a strong feeling this account is a bot.

internet_points 1y ago

Norway has gamified summer reading https://sommerles.no/svar https://sommerles.no/svar It's quite popular in the first half of elementary school. You get points for registering read books (even if your parent read it for your, or audio books) and every week all the libraries put up a poster with this week's "code word" which you get points for typing into your profile, and whenever you level up ten levels you get a little prize you can pick up from the library (like a tiny toy, they had shark teeth one year)

apwell23 1y ago
> get points for registering read books > little prize you can pick up from the library I am not convinced that this is really motivating to kids. Don't they have tons' of toys at home an in the library to play with already. Why would they care about tiny shark teeth. Also i find the whole concept of 'read to get prize' cynical, cheap and manipulative. Don't want to manipulate my own child with these cheap tricks.
- darthcircuit 1y ago
  Don’t underestimate the power of junk prizes. It’s how McDonald’s has gotten away with selling overpriced kids meals for decades. My kids love the novelty of garbage prize toys and while I think they are stupid, my kids get weirdly motivated by the promise of a trip to the dollar store.
- whycome 1y ago
  manipulation or motivation? I suppose it's blurry. But, I think the point is that once you get the kids into the habit (or help them build the skill) they'll maintain it later on. Even encouraging reading together has societal value. So, maybe tiny shark teeth are good motivation - i have no idea. I'm not great at gauging what motivates kids. I still don't understand minecraft.
- clintonb 1y ago
  Do you have children? You tell them something is animal-related and they tend to get really excited. Even more so for dinosaurs. My five year old has no concept of money, but he does have a concept of “new thing I can play with”. When I was a kid we had Book It. I got a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut for every 10(?) books I read. I read a lot of books! I also learned a lot along the way, and continued the habit of reading for fun through college.

kleiba 1y ago

The Christian library one town over from where we live does a "reading summer" event every year for the school holidays: kids who borrow books, read them, and write a small book report (2-3 sentences) for them enter a lottery and can win a small prize at the end of the holidays. And I believe every participants gets a certificate also. You'd think that this would not appeal to anyone, but they actually have a great turnout every year. Quite amazing actually.

soco 1y ago
Primary school kids in Switzerland used to (and maybe they still do) run class-wide "competitions" on the points earned on a similar reading challenge - Antolin if I remember correctly and my kid was quite in for it.
- kleiba 1y ago
  Cool. Although my gut reaction would be that this mostly incentives the kids who already enjoy reading to read more, while the ones who are not great at reading know that they don't have a chance, so perhaps are discouraged from reading even more?!
- gsck 1y ago
  We had something like this in our school called Accelerated Reader. Read books answer a quiz on it get points, best class/student got rewarded. Was really easy to game though. Our school library had a selection of books for what I can only assume were for special needs kids, really really simple books very few words with even fewer pages. These books rewarded an appropriate amount of points however so you got less, but you could easily bang out 20 of those books in one class and get a lot more points than you'd be rewarded for reading a real book. A few of us would just go over grab a bunch of those books and read through them in like 2 minutes and complete the quiz. They ended up not letting those books get used for AR
  - hombre_fatal 1y ago
    We had Accelerated Reader in my public school in Texas in the early 2000s. It was a pretty cool system. The lottery system described upstream is terrible. But with Accelerated Reader you would accumulate points that you could spend on things like the Scholastic Book Fair (buy books), slices of pizza for lunch, and various toy gadgets. Sometimes a teacher would sell some gimmick like a get out of homework ticket. Of course, you'd have to read a good number of books to receive any of these prizes. But you were always working towards something unlike a lottery system which isn't motivating at all.

mock-possum 1y ago

I’m sure I’m not the only one who fondly remembers their local public library’s “summer reading program” - read books, win prizes!

lenerdenator 1y ago

Sure am glad that we didn't just cut $9 billion in funding towards PBS and other public broadcasting institutions that aired Reading Rainbow.

whycome 1y ago
$9B?! Path to everything being private. Don't they want to also break up NOAA and National Weather to make them basically just data services? Private companies would then be the ones to publish it. Want to know the weather? Subscribe.
- camblomquist 1y ago
  They aren't breaking up NOAA just for the sake of privatization, reliable weather reporting also makes it harder to ignore Climate Change. From Project 2025 "[NOAA offices] form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."
  - falcor84 1y ago
    > climate change alarm industry I would actually like to buy a climate change alarm clock
    - evilkorn 1y ago
      10 minutes till midnight. Put it right next to your nuclear clock
    - whycome 1y ago
      We just keep hitting snooze. That's how we got into this mess. (It's a future generation's problem, right?...)
      - fknorangesite 1y ago
        > We just keep hitting snooze. Hah I wish - hitting snooze would at least push it back. We're just putting our heads under the pillow to try and ignore the blaring alarm.

duxup 1y ago

PBS is a national treasure.

AdmiralAsshat 1y ago

My favorite Doors song! [0] [0] https://youtu.be/--RYPHqbD50?si=YvldZg_xt--H3LSn https://youtu.be/--RYPHqbD50?si=YvldZg_xt--H3LSn

kochb 1y ago

LeVar Burton hosted a podcast marketed for adults where he read short stories. Though it ended last year, there are almost 200 episodes in the archive. He’s still been at work encouraging lifelong reading all these years later. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1244649384 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1...

david2ndaccount 1y ago

Summer reading programs are a band-aid on the problem that children shouldn’t have such a long summer break now that air conditioning is common. Spread the breaks out throughout the year if you want to maintain the same number of days off. All evidence shows the summer break is bad for children’s academic achievement (especially poor children), but it is viewed as a perk for the teachers so the teacher’s unions fight against questioning it.

joshbetz 1y ago
It is the only vacation most teachers get, so of course they fight against shortening it
- bigfishrunning 1y ago
  The argument wasn't for shortening it, but for distributing it through the year. I have never in my adult life taken 10 consecutive weeks off, and 5 two-week breaks would still be very generous.
lurkshark 1y ago
Let’s say summer break is basically 3 months. I as a parent need to figure out childcare for that 3 month period at the beginning of summer. This is a much more time consuming endeavor than most would expect (or at least more than I expected). If you distribute those months throughout the year I need to repeat this process 3 different times, adding a bunch of overhead that could be spent on activities more beneficial to my family and kids. Edit: Adding that I realize the summer slowdown absolutely exists and has a disproportionate effect on those that don’t need another wrench thrown in their life. But just wanted to add a perspective that isn’t “teacher union boogeyman”.
advisedwang 1y ago
Maybe summer break also has some value for the joy it brings to children? Their lives shouldn't just be preparation for adulthood, it's worth making childhood enjoyable too.
BrandonM 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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kjkjadksj 1y ago

I would always get a summer writing slump. Write nothing at all from june to august then I couldn’t read my own handwriting. My poor teachers.

xunil2ycom 1y ago

is this news?

fknorangesite 1y ago
Does it have to be?

karaterobot 1y ago

This article lavishes well-deserved praise on the intentions behind Reading Rainbow. I know I loved the show as a kid. But it seems like childhood reading scores were pretty much flat between 1983 and 2006, when the show was on the air: they only varied by 10-15 points on a 500 point scale[1], and there was no clear upward trend, it just sort of fluctuated. Reading for pleasure has never been lower among kids, either[2]. It doesn't seem to me that the mission of the show was achieved, if the mission was to make children read more books, and understand them more. Ultimately I think it ended up just being a pleasurable way to have kids get distracted by a friendly, positive TV show. My guess is that if you want to improve reading scores and habits, parents have to do more than just turn the dial to PBS. [1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9 https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9 [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/12/among-many-u-s-children-reading-for-fun-has-become-less-common-federal-data-shows/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/12/among-man...

pinko 1y ago
You may be right, but we have no idea what the scores would have been had Reading Rainbow not been on (i.e., maybe it held off a decline), so this isn't really meaningful one way or the other.
- karaterobot 1y ago
  They didn't start tracking in 1983, the numbers I linked start in 1971. The trend line is pretty much the same from 1971 to 1983 as it is from 1983 to 2006. In any case, a skeptical person would not look at that graph and say that there was a successful effort to improve childhood literacy represented on it. It's true that we don't know the counterfactual: it's possible literacy would have plummeted precipitously starting in 1984 if Reading Rainbow hadn't been a bulwark. But I don't find that the most likely explanation, personally.
orforforof 1y ago
It would be more relevant to look at reading scores for children who specifically tuned into Reading Rainbow. I suspect the number of viewers was a small fraction of all children in the US, in which case the show's ability to affect the nationwide reading scores would be low. In other words, I don't believe the data you cited supports a conclusion that the show was ineffective at educating individual viewers.