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.
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.
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.
Our local library had a summer reading program. You needed to talk about the book to a librarian, so we were waiting in line. The kid giving the book report was under 3 so it wasn't much of a book report, she asked the usual questions including "what was your favorite part of the book?"
The book the kid had read was Dinosailors which is about some dinosaurs who go on a sailing trip. The memorable part of the book is the page with no words that's just the dinosaurs throwing up because they all got seasick.
So, the non-verbal child happily reenacted their favorite part of the book.
As a yuth in the East Bay my Alameda Co. library had a summer reading program with a treasure map. For each book you read, you got a stamp on the map. Then at the end there was a forgettable prize, though, after 45 years I’ve not forgotten the journey.
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.
$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.
Back in the 90's and 00's, PBS had a show called "Irasshai" [1] aimed at high school students. It was a complete two year Japanese language education class filmed in conjunction with Georgia Tech.
They produced 140 30-minute lessons and produced two 500 page text books and teacher lesson plans. Study materials, homework, tests - everything.
It typically aired at 4 AM, so they asked you to set your VCR to record. If you couldn't do that, they could mail you the entire VHS boxed set of episodes.
But that's not the cool and powerful part. They actually let you register for classes and conference call in with an actual teacher. Twice to three times a week with class sizes of 4-6 students. Everyone took turns reading, answering questions, practicing dialogue. All year long.
There were tests and grades, and regular 1-1 proctored verbal exams. It was incredible.
The entire program was offered for free.
It was one of the coolest ways to learn Japanese and it was incredibly effective. This was such an amazing program for high schools that typically only offered Spanish lessons.
The obvious thing to cut is the goddamn military. I’m not even talking about cutting things off to make the military weaker in a world that largely doesn’t need a powerful military. I’m talking about actual insane over spending.
But even Elon couldn’t do that. I don’t know if any president can. Something is deeply wrong here.
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.
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.
RR was swimming against a current; 83-06 (and even going back to the early 70s) would have been the first generation+ raised by the first generations raised by TV, or with a TV in the house. It was also the first generation with access to the internet during childhood and young adulthood. People waiting for the movie to come out instead of reading the novel, etc. Everything about the technological zeitgeist was selling Americans on the idea that books didn't matter. The question isn't whether RR raised reading scores, but whether it kept them above water. Your graphs can't tell us anything about which is the case, but considering the context shows us which question is actually interesting and which isn't.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We did Book It! for a couple of years, but Accelerated Reader for most of the others. One of my favorite childhood memories as a kid was having to go to the local junior high, because the elementary school didn't have the test for the books I was reading.
It also made me want to read Anna Karenina, because that was listed as the book with the highest points awarded. It only took me 30 years to get around to finishing it.
Norway has gamified summer reading 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)
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.
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.
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.
Is gmena a typo or does Polish seriously have “gm” as a digraph? I have seen a reasonable amount of written Polish but I’ve never noticed “gm” before. That strikes me as really reaching, get a different alphabet, already.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
And there are schools that do year-round schedules, but the total time off is about the same. They will typically get a longer winter break, longer spring break, an additional fall break, and then a much shortened summer break, but those add up to about the same time off overall. I know many teachers who prefer that system, some because it means they get paychecks more consistently throughout the year, and also it gives you more spread out breaks and flexibility in taking trips instead of being locked in to summer/Christmas/one week in the spring.
The strongest push back to this schedule is in fact parents. The primary issue is once their kids are in different schools (high school / middle school / elementary) with different schedules this causes issues as kids are not longer on break at the same times. In addition summer camp programs are tied to the traditional schedule leaving kids in the year round schedule with fewer or no options.
In order to change it, you also need neighboring districts/communities/private schools/programming to all shift as well, otherwise it becomes too much of as hassle for parents & teachers.
Air conditioning is common, but at least in some regions, it would be a tremendous expense for the the school to condition their buildings for occupation during the summer. And many buildings were designed around the summer break, so they may not have capacity to condition the buildings for occupation during the summer; this is not without its problems as some buildings end up being unfit for occupation during the school year, especially as the climate gets less consistent. There's probably some opportunity for savings in places where increasing hours during the summer could result in decreasing hours in the winter, though.
I think there's some cultural value in having a shared experience of summer vacation. But I agree, breaking up the breaks throughout the year, where possible, would make a lot of sense. There's a benefit of less crowding when school districts have different weeks off; although it's harder for extended families to meet up when their school schedules are drastically different.
That assumes academic achievement should be the primary aim of childhood. What I learned in school was incredibly important—don’t get me wrong—but what I learned over the summer was arguably more important.
As a child of divorce, I cherished 6 straight weeks at my mom’s house (we only visited every other weekend during school). As a working class kid, I earned probably half my annual spending money over the summer.
My wife and I now have kids, and we’ve always loved to travel (and needed to just to visit family). Summer is the only time available for extended family trips (2+ weeks).
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.
Doing what? Just whatever? As long as they aren't doing any reading?
They should also replace lunch period with a "life" period. I see a lot of kids sitting around eating, getting fat, but kids need experience in real life; eating will get them nowhere.
Reading is doing when it involves active engagement - kids who read deeply are processing, imagining, questioning, and building mental models they later apply to real-world problems.
CSMastermind|7 months ago
Looking back on the list of Reading Rainbow books: 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|7 months ago
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|7 months ago
kleiba|7 months ago
You'd think that this would not appeal to anyone, but they actually have a great turnout every year. Quite amazing actually.
jvm___|7 months ago
The book the kid had read was Dinosailors which is about some dinosaurs who go on a sailing trip. The memorable part of the book is the page with no words that's just the dinosaurs throwing up because they all got seasick.
So, the non-verbal child happily reenacted their favorite part of the book.
kyleblarson|7 months ago
xtiansimon|7 months ago
RheingoldRiver|7 months ago
Why would this not appeal to anyone? Summer reading games are super popular and kids love getting small prizes
soco|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
bigmadshoe|7 months ago
lenerdenator|7 months ago
pitpatagain|7 months ago
whycome|7 months ago
echelon|7 months ago
Back in the 90's and 00's, PBS had a show called "Irasshai" [1] aimed at high school students. It was a complete two year Japanese language education class filmed in conjunction with Georgia Tech.
They produced 140 30-minute lessons and produced two 500 page text books and teacher lesson plans. Study materials, homework, tests - everything.
It typically aired at 4 AM, so they asked you to set your VCR to record. If you couldn't do that, they could mail you the entire VHS boxed set of episodes.
But that's not the cool and powerful part. They actually let you register for classes and conference call in with an actual teacher. Twice to three times a week with class sizes of 4-6 students. Everyone took turns reading, answering questions, practicing dialogue. All year long.
There were tests and grades, and regular 1-1 proctored verbal exams. It was incredible.
The entire program was offered for free.
It was one of the coolest ways to learn Japanese and it was incredibly effective. This was such an amazing program for high schools that typically only offered Spanish lessons.
And now that's gone.
[1] https://www.gpb.org/irasshai
ninetyninenine|7 months ago
But even Elon couldn’t do that. I don’t know if any president can. Something is deeply wrong here.
deadbabe|7 months ago
mproud|7 months ago
https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81750412?s=i&trkid=25859316...
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
karaterobot|7 months ago
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
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/12/among-man...
orforforof|7 months ago
h2zizzle|7 months ago
pinko|7 months ago
Loudergood|7 months ago
kochb|7 months ago
He’s still been at work encouraging lifelong reading all these years later.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1...
aspenmayer|7 months ago
twoodfin|7 months ago
Not unheard of in today’s tap-obsessed world of YouTube Kids & streaming apps, but much harder to find.
burnt-resistor|7 months ago
monkeyelite|7 months ago
This is a weird comment. He’s a professional actor. I hope he does
jimbob45|7 months ago
ChrisArchitect|7 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It!
aspenmayer|7 months ago
dustincoates|7 months ago
It also made me want to read Anna Karenina, because that was listed as the book with the highest points awarded. It only took me 30 years to get around to finishing it.
internet_points|7 months ago
apwell23|7 months ago
> 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.
parpfish|7 months ago
AdmiralAsshat|7 months ago
[0] https://youtu.be/--RYPHqbD50?si=YvldZg_xt--H3LSn
ajuc|7 months ago
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|7 months ago
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.
cyberax|7 months ago
A _lot_ of them (nearly 125000 about 250 people per library on average). And you can do inter-library loans, and you can check out DVDs and BluRays.
pfannkuchen|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
mock-possum|7 months ago
LongjumpingCat|7 months ago
WalterBright|7 months ago
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|7 months ago
kjkjadksj|7 months ago
duxup|7 months ago
xunil2ycom|7 months ago
fknorangesite|7 months ago
xrd|7 months ago
[deleted]
seizethecheese|7 months ago
heckintime|7 months ago
[deleted]
throwing_away|7 months ago
Made me think reading was probably a scam.
esseph|7 months ago
Big Book out to get u
(How the fuck did you know what "propaganda" was before you could even read btw?)
user4673568345|7 months ago
[deleted]
etchalon|7 months ago
monkeyelite|7 months ago
fsckboy|7 months ago
[deleted]
david2ndaccount|7 months ago
lurkshark|7 months ago
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”.
kodt|7 months ago
And there are schools that do year-round schedules, but the total time off is about the same. They will typically get a longer winter break, longer spring break, an additional fall break, and then a much shortened summer break, but those add up to about the same time off overall. I know many teachers who prefer that system, some because it means they get paychecks more consistently throughout the year, and also it gives you more spread out breaks and flexibility in taking trips instead of being locked in to summer/Christmas/one week in the spring.
The strongest push back to this schedule is in fact parents. The primary issue is once their kids are in different schools (high school / middle school / elementary) with different schedules this causes issues as kids are not longer on break at the same times. In addition summer camp programs are tied to the traditional schedule leaving kids in the year round schedule with fewer or no options.
In order to change it, you also need neighboring districts/communities/private schools/programming to all shift as well, otherwise it becomes too much of as hassle for parents & teachers.
toast0|7 months ago
I think there's some cultural value in having a shared experience of summer vacation. But I agree, breaking up the breaks throughout the year, where possible, would make a lot of sense. There's a benefit of less crowding when school districts have different weeks off; although it's harder for extended families to meet up when their school schedules are drastically different.
BrandonM|7 months ago
As a child of divorce, I cherished 6 straight weeks at my mom’s house (we only visited every other weekend during school). As a working class kid, I earned probably half my annual spending money over the summer.
My wife and I now have kids, and we’ve always loved to travel (and needed to just to visit family). Summer is the only time available for extended family trips (2+ weeks).
nitwit005|7 months ago
We've cut the music and art in schools too. I guess the end state is one long endless math class. I'm sure those kids will be well adjusted.
joshbetz|7 months ago
advisedwang|7 months ago
dehrmann|7 months ago
aspect0545|7 months ago
pessimizer|7 months ago
They should also replace lunch period with a "life" period. I see a lot of kids sitting around eating, getting fat, but kids need experience in real life; eating will get them nowhere.
ethan_smith|7 months ago
JimBlackwood|7 months ago
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.
conception|7 months ago