Even if you can't remember a specific Reading Rainbow episode, chances are, the theme song is still lodged somewhere in your head: Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high, Take a look, it's in a book — Reading Rainbow ... Remember now?
Shouldn't this wildly successful franchise just RUN ITSELF? What about DVD sales? Anything? How is it that PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting can't pay the several hundred thousand dollars to renew the broadcast rights?
The current VP of children's programming at PBS says that funding has shifted from children's shows like Reading Rainbow that foster a love of reading to shows that teach reading fundamentals and phonics. I sure would love to see the research that backs that up.
The truth is, a love of reading jumpstarts a life-long virtuous cycle of curiousity and mind expansion. Love of reading is something that supercedes any particular skillset. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for the rest of his life.
But in this particular case, focusing on individual skills is like teaching a child to fish when they don't even know they need to eat food!
There's an online petition. I signed it. If you loved Reading Rainbow the same way I loved it, so should you.