LeVar Burton
LeVar Burton
Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Jr., professionally known as LeVar Burton, is an American actor, presenter, director, and author. He is best known for his roles as the young Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots, Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as the host of the long-running PBS children's series Reading Rainbow. He has also directed a number of television episodes...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth16 February 1957
CityLandstuhl, Germany
CountryUnited States of America
I've always been interested in gadgets and technology and I've always been a reader.
Yeah. I do. I think that we have to continue to expand the areas in which we want our kids to be literate. And social media's going to be a part of their lives. And why not? Why not give them a sense of what the rules of the road are?
It is no longer appropriate for me as an American to sit by and expect my government to get it done.
We want a book to be a book. We'll have all the interactive bells and whistles but our intent is to engage young people in reading, not to show them a movie.
It's not about division. It's not about politics. My concern is how do we come together?
Because storytelling, and visual storytelling, was put in the hands of everybody, and we have all now become storytellers.
Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future was really important to me growing up because it said when the future comes, there will be people like you who are vital and important to that mission of going out there and boldly exploring.
You can break down anything for a child, and you have to know what your child is ready for and what your child is not.
I'm a firm believer and always have been that there aren't all that many things that you should not express to children in an age-appropriate manner, and as a parent, that is your job - to be discerning as to whether or not your child can handle the information, provided you have the ability to express yourself in that age-appropriate way.
I feel like I have been able to notice throughout the incremental march of history during the course of my own lifetime patterns emerging, and there's a sort of a rubber band effect that happens where social growth and change is concerned.
All literature is political.
It's definitely true that there are a lot of the devices we used on 'Star Trek,' that came out the imagination of the writers, and the creators that are actually in the world today.
I have always been a fan of 'Star Trek.' I love Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future.
I'm excited to see how current and future technologies revolutionize the way we learn.