Hacker Cinema
Reading Rainbow
1983 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 21 seasons
Journey to exciting places and build a lasting connection with your favorite books. Each episode centers on a theme from a book, or other children's literature, which is explored through a number of segments or stories.
3 positive2 negative1 mixed2 neutralfrom 8 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
8 comments on Hacker News
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
[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/
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
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.
Glad you drew this comparison. I have a 4yo who (TLDR) we didn't really push TV on and started reading on his own when he was two.
Before he was born I put a lot of thought into what he would watch before he was born assuming it would be a huge necessity to address. I torrented Mr Rodgers and Reading Rainbow and Eureka (amazing old science cartoon if anyone's encountered it) and I even started writing a script that would randomly select from these and automatically turn off after 1-3 episodes.
Basically I am shocked at how wrong I was. He had no natural interest in TV beyond a few minutes, even if we were watching something. We didn't have a reason to push it, when he did see newer kids media like Bluey / Cocomelon etc he would zombie out exactly as you described and then have noticeably crappier behavior for a while after we would have to have a minor battle to turn it off. Felt like microwaving his brain and we had no reason to push it on him so we didn't. After a few days he would never miss it. We let him watch stuff at friend's houses and still pop on old stuff that I downloaded once every week or two. Same basic behavior / problems. We always back off for the same reasons.
I grew up on TV and I don't judge parents who legitimately love watching TV with their kids or need it as a babysitter because of demanding schedules or absent child care assistance. It is an incredible tool in a culture that often separates extended families and discourages grandparents from playing active daily supportive roles.
But yeah for whatever reason our kid started reading independently when he was two, got really interested in languages, got his basic operators down while he was 2-3 and has never had any serious behavioral or developmental problems and other parents are always asking us what we did to accelerate his development and make him such a genius.
We didn't do anything unnatural, we just didn't intentionally push him to watch a lot of TV. He still watches stuff, we still watch stuff. It's just on a laptop and ends when he starts turning into a zombie.
With that said Bluey seems fine to me, my kids the one with the weird zombie reaction. And disclaimers all kids are different, I'm incredibly lucky to work from home on a schedule where I get to hang out with him all the time and I'm pretty sure regardless of zombie Cocomelon watching his generations problems are not going to be rooted in them zonking out on TV but who knows.
The fourth episode in the premiere season (1983) of PBS's Reading Rainbow featured a story narrated by James Earl Jones.
The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QN9npF9A3M
30 years ago my afternoon consisted of getting home at 2:30, watching The Disney Afternoon until about 5:00, then watching Square One, Reading Rainbow, and ideally 3-2-1 Contact (though it conflicted with The Mcneil-Lehrer News Hour that my mom always wanted to watch). Then it'd be on to The Cosby Show or Star Trek or some other sitcom. I think I averaged between 3.5-5 hours of TV per day. No cable.
I basically don't want TV anymore, and my kids are limited to 3 hours of screentime per day, which they basically only get on weekends. (They get maybe an hour during the weekday, but that's because their school/daycare/aftercare days are much longer than mine were as a kid). I do set limits for them, but both of them (preschool-age) are able to turn off the tablets on their own if faced with the choice of doing it themselves or having mommy & daddy do it.
"Says who? Look, it's a consensual relationship between backers and people looking for crowdfunding."
Well, I do, for one. I watched the video and read the kickstarter page, and came close to donating. But the more I learned, the more I thought: "wait. this is trying to leverage my childhood nostalgia for a good public television show into a donation to what amounts to an internet startup with a paid product." And then, once I'd re-framed the project in that light I started comparing it to other worthy causes, and it didn't stack up.
The thing is, it took me a lot of thought to get to that point, and I'm pretty sure that most people just punched the money button because Levar Burton and "OMG cute childhood memories!" I'll even wager that a fair number contributed because reading and/or attention span isn't a strong suit (irony!), and they thought the thing was to bring the show back to PBS since there were lots of reading rainbow logos everywhere.
A "consensual relationship" it may be, but the old adage about a sucker being born every minute was also rooted in consensual relationships. It's why we have (had?) those pesky securities laws that prevented direct consumer solicitation of investment in private companies.
Excited to see this! I have such fond memories of watching Reading Rainbow.
I would love to see a similar kickstarter for other shows I also enjoyed - The Magic School Bus first in my mind. I just rediscovered all the shows on Netflix and I've been watching all the episodes.... I _just_ discovered that a lot of the guests on the show are celebrities like Dom DeLuise, Elliott Gould, Alex Trebek and more, and I can't find another show quite like it. It dates itself here and there - like the series finale was about computers and features floppy drives - but The Friz is unparalleled on so many levels. She was a great role model while I was young.