Hows vs Whys

So Reading Rainbow is being canceled after 26 years. That makes it one of the longest running children's shows in history, bested only by Mr. Rogers, and Sesame Street.

What's strange about the decision to cancel the show is that economics are only partly to blame. Another factor is that of shifting missions in educational TV. Essentially, Reading Rainbow taught kids the 'whys' of literacy, not just the bare bones of letters, words, commas and spelling.

By reading a new story each week, and creating a community of critique and exploration around children's literature, the show exemplified the joys of reading for pleasure, curiosity, or just plain old interest.

Unfortunately, according to various of the top brass at PBS, helping kids learn to love reading is a luxury the network cannot afford, "teaching the mechanics of reading should be the network's priority". Ie; all we want is the hows, we'll let kids who know how to read discover the whys on their own time and without any help from us.

One of the best profs in my masters degree opened our class on communication theory by talking about instrumental vs meditative thought. I've banged on about this at length already but I am not even close to finished, it's such an excellent and useful juxtaposition. Reading Rainbows purpose was akin to meditative thought. Which is in case you haven't read my explanation on these terms before, is basically thought without articulated purpose, thinking for the pleasure of thinking, stringing some ideas together to see what happens. VS. thinking to some important end goal, be it a degree, a resolution, an outcome of any sort.

It would be hard to measure the end result of reading a new book to a television audiences each week. Who knows if the children who watched the show over 26 years learned to read better, or even at all. But literacy is surprisingly not just about reading, it's about building a relationship with a largely textual culture. Which is exactly what LeVar Burton was offering. A way to have a relationship with a book or a series of books, and not just with books with other readers, and to no obvious purpose aside from the fact that it was enjoyable, and fun. In fact Burton himself puts it best when he says: "I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being ... it's just such an integral part of the human experience — that connection with the written word."

By focusing on the instrumental aspects of literacy, the putting of letters together to spell words, and using those words to form sentences and using those sentences to make paragraphs, and using those paragraphs to make sense of the world. PBS is focusing so much on the first part of that process, that they may miss out on the beautiful part of literate practices, the making sense part.

Children meditatively (and to a large degree unintentionally) use being read to, narratives, and talking about narratives, to become literate, as much as they use alphabet lessons. In fact literacy becomes a side-effect of learning about the world, and relating to the people in it.

Maybe I am playing the trumpet with my ass here, but I just can't picture a child sitting in front of the tv learning about letters and their relationship to each other without wanting also to know "what happens at the end?"