Newsmakers

  • LeVar Burton’s Summer Reading Musts and ‘Turning Kids Into Readers for Life’

    By David Wright, Mary-Rose Abraham & Ben Brown | Newsmakers – 13 hrs ago

    It was June 6, 1983. School was out and kids were plonked in front of the TV for the summer. A new show premiered, extolling the virtues of shutting off the television and reading a book.

    That was 30 years ago. The episode “Tight Times” debuted as the first episode of public television’s “Reading Rainbow.” And though the program’s 26-year run ended in 2009, its host LeVar Burton continues to champion the joys of reading and the importance of literacy.

    “I spent the last 36 years of my life really trying to change the world,” said Burton.

    And he found that the medium best suited to doing that was television, whether hosting “Reading Rainbow;” as Geordi La Forge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation;” or as the young Kunta Kinte on the groundbreaking miniseries “Roots.”

    Though “Reading Rainbow” started out with “meager budgets” and little support, Burton said after a few years, teachers started noticing that kids were coming back in the Fall with improved reading and comprehension skills,

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  • Bill Cosby: ‘I Wanted to Take the House Back’ from Kids

    By Dan Kloeffler & Nick Poppy | Newsmakers – Sat, Jun 15, 2013

    Bill CosbyBill Cosby: 'I Wanted to Take the House Back' from Kids

    Bill Cosby does not suffer foolish parents gladly.

    In a recent interview with ABC News, the legendary comic, actor, writer and educator mused on the parenting philosophy behind his seminal television program, “The Cosby Show.”

    Drawn from his own life experiences, the show allowed Cosby to correct something he saw and disliked in popular culture: poor parenting.

    “I based the series on two important things: Number one … I hated those series where the children were brighter than the parents, and those parents had to play dumb,” Cosby said.

    Indeed, the Dr. Huxtable character Cosby created for the show stands in stark contrast to the blundering idiot dads of other popular comedies before and after his time (Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, Peter Griffin, Phil Dunphy, etc.).

    “Number two was that I wanted to ‘take the house back,’” Cosby said.

    By Cosby’s estimation, if you want to entertain children “at the expense of parenting, at the expense of keeping children out of harm’s way to get these

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