3 USING TELEVISION TO ENCOURAGE READING

BOX 5.3 USING TELEVISION TO ENCOURAGE READING

Using a television show to encourage reading? Surely that is an oxymoron and a lost cause? A couple of popular PBS shows think otherwise. The book review show, Reading Rainbow, hosted by Star Trek’s Levar Burton, reads stories to children, accompanied by compelling illustrations and live-action photography and followed by Levar’s visit to a setting described in the story. Near the end of the show other books are read or reviewed in briefer fashion. Does it matter? Sales of books featured on Reading Rainbow jumped 150% to 900% and a survey of librarians found that 82% reported children asking for books featured on Reading Rainbow (Fisch, 2002; Wood & Duke, 1997).

Another PBS show, Wishbone, takes a different approach to literature. Wishbone is a wisecracking terrier owned by 12-year-old Joe Talbot Every week Joe and his friends David and Samantha experience various

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challenges of growing up. The gimmick is that a parallel abridged dramatization of a work of great literature is interspersed with Joe’s adventures, and a costumed live dog Wishbone is always a lead character in the literary play within the play Usually there is some thematic parallel between the contemporary and literary story. As if that were not enough, each half hour ends with a brief how-to segment on how the special effects of the literary segment were filmed. Children are captivated and inspired to seek featured books from the library, or even buy the paperback Wishbone versions of the classics (expanded from the TV show but greatly condensed from the original work). As with most successful kids’ shows, there are spinoff products of software, card games, and plush toys (some of Wishbone in costume as Romeo, Odysseus, or Robin Hood!).

Can the same phenomenon happen with adults? Although acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison won a Nobel Prize in 1993, that was nothing compared to having her novel Song of Solomon selected as the second offering of the Oprah Book Club in December 1996. Although Morrison, who seldom watches TV, had never heard of the Oprah Book Club, she quickly realized its importance. Within months, a million copies of the selected novel sold, and paperback sales of her other novels jumped about 25% (P.Gray, 1998)! Author Jonathan Franzen responded ambivalently to a tentative offer to feature his novel The Corrections; Oprah promptly withdrew the invitation and left Franzen out in the cold. When Oprah announced in 2002 that she would be discontinuing her book club in a few years, publishers and authors emitted a collective gasp.

Science Shows for Children

Although science shows for children are not new (Marlon Perkins’ Wild Kingdom and Mr. Wizard appeared in the 1950s), one of the earliest modern science shows was the CTW project, 3–2–1 Contact, which debuted in 1980 with the goal of teaching scientific thinking to 8- to 12-year olds. It attempted to help children experience the excitement of scientific discovery and to encourage all children, particularly girls and minorities, to feel comfortable with science as an endeavor (Mielke & Chen, 1983).

More recently, PBS’ Kratts’ Creatures and Zooboomafoo feature young adult naturalist brothers Martin and Chris Kratt as they go romping over the world in their quest to see interesting creatures and teach young viewers how important it is to preserve these species and their habitats. The Kratts not only observe; they participate. They climb trees with the monkeys, wallow in the mudhole with the elephants, and slither through the forest with the

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snakes, but always being respectful of the animals’ space. The Kratts’ childlike marveling at the wonder of nature, whether it be the massive invasion of Costa Rican beaches by sea turtles to lay their eggs or the discovery of the habits of a backyard urban raccoon, sells children on the wonders of zoology and conservation.

A somewhat different, and even higher energy approach, is taken by Bill Nye, the Science Guy, another PBS program offering a wide variety of high- tech, high-action science demonstrations, with a generous helping of wisecracks thrown in. There is modeling of conducting experiments in many settings. The commercial offering Beakman’s World takes a similar approach. Both shows effectively counter the image of science as being difficult, stuffy, and generally uncool.

See Fisch (2002) for an excellent review of educational effects of children’s prosocial television programs.

Channel One

One of the most controversial efforts in prosocial children’s TV has been Channel One, a service of daily news for secondary school students. Offered directly to schools at no charge since 1990, Channel One was in about 40% of all middle and high schools in the United States by 1997 (Bachen, 1998). Channel One, owned by K-III Communications since 1994, has been controversial since its inception, primarily because of its inclusion of 2 minutes of commercials, whose sales support the 10 minutes of news in the program. Although commercials are hardly new to teenagers, the captive audience nature of the school experience caused particular concern. Evaluation research (see Bachen, 1998, for a review) suggests a small positive effect of learning about events in the news. Some research shows that students report a greater desire to buy the advertised products, relative to

a control group (Greenberg & Brand, 1993). Interestingly, another potential but seldom expressed concern about Channel One is the possibility for abuse by some future producers who might choose to set a particular political agenda or offer a very biased view of the news to this young captive audience.

Teen Programs

One of the most positive changes to come from the proliferation of cable channels has been greater amounts and quality of positive programming targeted at preteens and early adolescents. These programs, particular prevalent on Nickelodeon and Disney cable channels, are the most extensive attempts ever on commercial TV to develop quality older children’s programming. Such shows as Lizzie McGuire, The Amanda Show, That’s So

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Raven, Boy Meets World, Even Stevens, and Sister, Sister are immensely popular with 11 to 15-year-olds. These shows model behavioral scripts of dealing with difficult situations common to that age, for example, bullying, trying to be popular, maintaining friendships, and relating to parents and siblings. They present interesting and humorous characters in amusing situations, but with a refreshing lack of bad language, sexual overtones, or violence. See Box 5.4 for a look at how teen shows portray friendships.

Children’s Prosocial Learning from Adult Television Although children’s television is important, a large majority of what children

watch is not television produced for children but rather programs produced for a general audience of primarily adults. Can children learn prosocial attitudes and behaviors from general television? At least one study suggested that they can. Rosenkoetter (1999) had first, third, and fifth graders watch episodes of the family sitcoms The Cosby Show and Full House and then tested them for comprehension of the moral lessons contained in the shows. The large majority at all ages comprehended the lessons from the Cosby episode, and about half did so from the Full House episode. How many hours of prosocial sitcoms children watched was a moderate predictor of first graders’ actual prosocial behavior, as judged by their parents, although this difference was less with the older children.