By now, youve surely heard the news that the irrepressible LeVar Burton late of Star Trek, Roots and the classic childrens show Reading Rainbow has launched a $1-million Kickstarter to get a Rainbow reboot/spin-off online.
It will not, lets be clear, replicate the classic show that aired from 1983 to 2009. (Burton bought the rights to that show and its name and used them to spin off another company, RRKidz, which produces a Reading Rainbow tablet app.) The Kickstarter would essentially expand on that app, making it available on the Web and updating it with special tools for teachers not for free, as the classic show was on PBS, but at a monthly subscription cost.
Although we first knew LeVar Burton for his roles on "Roots" and "Star Trek," he may be most well-known for bringing our favorite children's books to life on "Reading Rainbow." After the show went off the air, Burton decided it wasn't the end. He sits down with Nia-Malika Henderson to talk about his latest project, a Reading Rainbow app.
His company will, Burton suggests, change the lives of millions of children.
Its hard to disagree with that kind of optimism. Its so imminently, self-evidently agreeable, in fact, that within hours of the fundraiser going up, more than 13,000 people have donated more than $600,000. But all the enthusiasm raises some obvious questions: If Reading Rainbow is so epically popular, then why was the show cancelled to begin with? And now that its coming back as a for-profit company, not a charity is it really the best vehicle for teaching literacy to millions of children?
A bit of recent history is critical here. Reading Rainbow was cancelled abruptly in 2009 after nearly three decades on the air. Per John Grant, the content director at WNED Buffalo, which co-produced the series, it would have cost several hundred thousand dollars to renew the show i.e. far less than what the Kickstarter is asking for now. But neither WNED nor PBS wanted to pony up because both believed that the show was no longer the best way to teach kids reading skills. And in the round of Education Department grants distributed before Reading Rainbow shut down, money went primarily to programs that targeted low-income kids ages 2 to 8. When the show went off the air in 2009, NPR explained it this way:
Research has directed programming toward phonics and reading fundamentals as the front line of the literacy fight. Reading Rainbow occupied a more luxurious space the show operated on the assumption that kids already had basic reading skills and instead focused on fostering a love of books.
In other words, when Reading Rainbow began in 1983, the big question was, how do we get kids interested in reading? By 2009, that question had become, how do we teach kids to read, period?
Unfortunately, its unclear how the new, digital Reading Rainbow will address that disparity if it chooses to at all. The current Reading Rainbow app, which the Kickstarter claims it will expand on, is built on the foundations of the classic show: book read-alongs, video field trips the stuff that worked wonders in the 80s, and requires lots of bandwidth in the present day.
In fact, while the Kickstarter promises to deliver more books to low-income kids, there are already some hints that its not totally up to speed with those same kids digital realities. Its well-documented fact, for instance, that low-income households are disproportionately more likely to access the Internet by cellphone. And yet Reading Rainbow wants to put its app on desktop computers first which requires both computer ownership and high-speed Internet access. (Less than half of households earning less than $30,000 a year have high-speed broadband, per Pew.) To further complicate this Reading-Rainbow-as-literacy-charity narrative, WNED also claims that the show is already popular, and therefore available, in classrooms nationwide. Its definitely available, at least in part, on YouTube.
All this adds up to a criticism that has been levied at high-profile Kickstarter campaigns before: Crowdfunding is theoretically supposed to bolster charities, start-ups, independent artists, small-business owners and other projects that actually need the financial support of the masses to succeed. Its not supposed to be co-opted by companies with profit motives and private investors of their own
which, despite Burtons charisma, is exactly what the Rainbow reboot is.
Dont get me wrong: Anything that puts books in kids hands is good, and anything that even incrementally helps them to read is wonderful. If youre donating to the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter out of nostalgia for a show you watched and loved, by all means, proceed.
But if youre donating to Reading Rainbow because of the grandiose charity rhetoric Burtons employing on Kickstarter, you might want to look elsewhere maybe the nonprofit Childrens Literacy Initiative or the Washington, D.C.-based First Book, both of which get high grades from Charity Navigator. They might not have LeVars nostalgia appeal, but theres no doubt who those charities serve.
