It’s In A Book
Reading Rainbow and the RIF (Reading Is Fundamental) program both made books an active part of my childhood. They were the only exposure to reading for pleasure that a lot of kids in my class ever had. The loss of Reading Rainbow, and the RIF program in many areas (sadly, mostly in poor areas where there simply isn’t funding anymore) is a huge blow to an entire generation of kids. Knowing how to read isn’t the same thing as -wanting- to read. It’s not the same as understanding that reading can teach you how to think for yourself, can show you an entire world (worlds!) beyond the narrow scope of your daily experience.
I have to wonder, in the cynical corner of my mind I reserve for imagining our dystopian future, if that isn’t the point. If reading is something you only do for work, if it represents drudgery and routine, instead of nearly limitless possibility, I think we lose an entire generation of thinkers. We turn them, instead, into a generation of people who wait for answers to come to them, who don’t believe they are capable of answering life’s questions themselves. We make learning less important than being told.
