Butterfly in the sky.
Aug. 28th, 2009 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinA love of writing often comes from a love of reading. I say "often", not "always", because there are some counterexamples and they generally speaking aren't very pretty.
My love of reading comes from several places. The first, biggest, and most obvious is my mother, who read picture books to me when I was very young and read The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia to me when I was not much older.
The second would be living in a town where I had free access to a good public library, with an entire floor given over to children's books. It was decorated, quite imaginatively, with a pumpkin theme.
The third would be my public school's library, which wasn't exactly a slouch, either. I first read A Wizard of Earthsea in the library on the elementary school side (it was one building for K-12, but split down the middle), and a few years later I read The Tombs of Atuan in the high school library and didn't realize it was a sequel until very near the end. I also read quite a lot of the Vonnegut canon, and Truman Capote, and I don't know what all else there.
The fourth thing that helped shape my love of reading was TV.
Yes, TV.
No, I'm not invoking the venerable spirit of old Groucho, who once remarked that he found TV very educational -- in that every time someone turned it on, he went into another room and read a good book. I mean that my mother, who read to me the great works of English fantasy for children, plopped me down in front of the TV on practically a daily basis and this instilled in me a love of books.
But you don't have to take my word for it...
Ah, Reading Rainbow. Every couple of years I would find myself stumbling over a current reference to it and be pleasantly surprise that it was still on the air.
It seems that won't happen any longer, sadly.
Twenty-six years is an impressive run, and the reasons for its cancellation make a little bit of sense... it's no good talking about the love of reading without also teaching children how to read. But one can recognize that the horse must go in front of the cart and still appreciate the importance of the cart. There is no learner like a motivated learner... as the saying says, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.", and yet, you can make sure the horse is good and thirsty when you get to the stream, nature will take its course.
I watched Reading Rainbow before I knew how to read. I loved reading before I knew how to read. As I grew up, I watched other children under my mother's care do the same thing. Those children grew up to be some of the brightest children in our little town.
Love of reading doesn't just lead to love of writing. It leads to love of learning. First with learning to read becoming a self-motivated task, and then because it's difficult--if not impossible--to satisfy the love of reading without learning. If the child who loves to read stops paying attention to a teacher's lecture, it's likely because he or she is reading ahead.
Teachers brought their own children to my mother's daycare because they wanted their children to excel. That was more thanks to her than LeVar, but Reading Rainbow was a useful tool. For parents who work outside the home, and for whom a small-town licensed day care where one person directly cares for a small number of children would be a luxury, it could be an essential one.
Anyway, I realize that there's limited funding for children's educational television and they have to put their money where they think it will do the most good, which right now is on the fundamentals. I think they'd get more bang for their buck if they paired that approach with LeVar Burton's... but with twenty-six seasons in the can and PBS as cash-strapped as ever, it's unlikely that Reading Rainbow will actually remain off the airwaves for long even if no one can pay to produce new episodes and regardless of what today's educational mandates are.
My love of reading comes from several places. The first, biggest, and most obvious is my mother, who read picture books to me when I was very young and read The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia to me when I was not much older.
The second would be living in a town where I had free access to a good public library, with an entire floor given over to children's books. It was decorated, quite imaginatively, with a pumpkin theme.
The third would be my public school's library, which wasn't exactly a slouch, either. I first read A Wizard of Earthsea in the library on the elementary school side (it was one building for K-12, but split down the middle), and a few years later I read The Tombs of Atuan in the high school library and didn't realize it was a sequel until very near the end. I also read quite a lot of the Vonnegut canon, and Truman Capote, and I don't know what all else there.
The fourth thing that helped shape my love of reading was TV.
Yes, TV.
No, I'm not invoking the venerable spirit of old Groucho, who once remarked that he found TV very educational -- in that every time someone turned it on, he went into another room and read a good book. I mean that my mother, who read to me the great works of English fantasy for children, plopped me down in front of the TV on practically a daily basis and this instilled in me a love of books.
But you don't have to take my word for it...
Ah, Reading Rainbow. Every couple of years I would find myself stumbling over a current reference to it and be pleasantly surprise that it was still on the air.
It seems that won't happen any longer, sadly.
Twenty-six years is an impressive run, and the reasons for its cancellation make a little bit of sense... it's no good talking about the love of reading without also teaching children how to read. But one can recognize that the horse must go in front of the cart and still appreciate the importance of the cart. There is no learner like a motivated learner... as the saying says, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.", and yet, you can make sure the horse is good and thirsty when you get to the stream, nature will take its course.
I watched Reading Rainbow before I knew how to read. I loved reading before I knew how to read. As I grew up, I watched other children under my mother's care do the same thing. Those children grew up to be some of the brightest children in our little town.
Love of reading doesn't just lead to love of writing. It leads to love of learning. First with learning to read becoming a self-motivated task, and then because it's difficult--if not impossible--to satisfy the love of reading without learning. If the child who loves to read stops paying attention to a teacher's lecture, it's likely because he or she is reading ahead.
Teachers brought their own children to my mother's daycare because they wanted their children to excel. That was more thanks to her than LeVar, but Reading Rainbow was a useful tool. For parents who work outside the home, and for whom a small-town licensed day care where one person directly cares for a small number of children would be a luxury, it could be an essential one.
Anyway, I realize that there's limited funding for children's educational television and they have to put their money where they think it will do the most good, which right now is on the fundamentals. I think they'd get more bang for their buck if they paired that approach with LeVar Burton's... but with twenty-six seasons in the can and PBS as cash-strapped as ever, it's unlikely that Reading Rainbow will actually remain off the airwaves for long even if no one can pay to produce new episodes and regardless of what today's educational mandates are.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2009-08-28 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-08-29 05:00 am (UTC)There is a facebook group: SAVE READING RAINBOW
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129422926490
There is also a petition at Care2.org:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/return-reading-rainbow-to-the-air
no subject
on 2009-08-29 11:26 pm (UTC)The only problem with showing reruns of the show is that I've seen references off the show's Wikipedia article that the rights in question include renewing broadcast rights for the books featured in each episode. I'm not entirely sure that's accurate, but it would be a big stumbling block if true.
On the other hand, Reading Rainbow would be a great model for someone else wanting to make a show to emulate.