Interesting article here - basically saying that the government's literacy strategy has killed kid's passion for literature and could be bad news for the publishing industry.

http://www.thebookseller.com/?pid=2&did=17439

Cath

While it's easy and, dare I say it, popularist to blame the government for every defficiency we see in modern society, I think it is slightly unfair to burden government with the full accountability for this.

Books. We think they're wonderful. But why did we ever start reading them? For a number of reasons, likely, but for a large number of people, it will have been because there was no better alternative.

In today's world, books are falling down the pecking order because they just aren't interactive enough. With a book in hand, you sit sedately on your comfortable furniture piece of choice and absorb somebody else's story in complete silence. You rarely need add any thought into this process. It's like slowly dripping water into a sponge. It gets the sponge wet, which may or may not be what you're trying to do, but it's all one way.

With the maturation of console and PC gaming as an entertainment medium, even television will eventually have to take a good long look at how it is structured. 10 years ago, if someone had suggested that people would pay monthly subscriptions that cost more than some Sky packages just to play computer games over the internet, they'd have had to wipe the saliva from their face after people had laughed at them so hard and without control that their spittle had rained out like a monsoon.

In a way, it is concerning. We are becoming an increasingly sedentary people. In a few decades time, with the exception of professional sports, almost every form of entertainment available to human beings will involve sitting stationary on a chair.

Is this the fault of government? Can we really blame education legislation for an ever vociferous demand for ever more advanced technology, providing ever more complex and interactive entertainment?

If the blame can be laid squarely at anyone's feet (and I do apologise that my arguments almost exclusively lead back here), it is at those of the parents failing to prize the console pads out of the hands of their impressionable children and stuff books in their faces. Parenting has largely devolved into an inconvenience. How can I make him shut up? How can I keep her quiet for a few hours? How can I keep them in their rooms for a the rest of the night so that we can have some time to ourselves?

I know all paretns aren't like this, but enough of them are to be the general cause of the problem we have. Experience of reading has taught me that a book can be every bit as absorbing as any movie, and as value-creating as any amount of time spend out-strategising opponents across the internet. But is it as instantly approchable? No. Reading is an acquired taste. Indeed, it s a skill that is a pre-requisite to itself. Compare this to the plug-and-play culture of gaming, or the instant satisfaction of televisual entertainment media. Without the parents themselves fighting the corner of the paper-based dinosaur of entertainment, what chance does it have?

I heard Michael Morpurgo talk recently about a school who were pushed for time, so they thought it would be a good idea to chop the class into three equal parts and give each group one third of a particular book to read. One group read the first 70 pages, the second read the middle 70, and the third read the last. They gave each other a run down of "things wot happened" in their bit so they could all grasp the novel as a whole.

No one in the class understood what the book was supposed to be about. Big surprise eh?

Parents have a certain level of responsibility, but the primary source of education should be school, and if schools are doing stupid, pointless tasks like this, then pick up your hope, pack it in a box and chuck it in the river.

Colin M

I understand your point, but I disagree.

Schools have the same duty of care that a driving instructor has to their students. The purpose of their existence is to pass on a skill, in order that the student can pass a driving test. Only once this test is passed can that person then go out on the roads and learn how to drive.

Schools need to provide children with skills (and I will admit that they barely seem to be managing that), but should they really also be providing children with a bias as to what they should prefer doing in their spare time by deliberately attempting to inject a fervour for book reading? That sounds to me like a dangerous precedent. It's worse than selectively teaching religion.

I'm sure we'd all love kids to come home from school begging to get into a 500 page booker prize winning literary effort, but by the same token, I've no doubt that there are people wishing kids could come home hoping to write some lines of code for a program, solve tough equations, cook a meal, call up someone in france and hold a conversation, go out in the field and play football, hockey or another sport with other friends, build a bridge out of matchsticks, repair floorboards or any number of other things. They simply cannot do all the things everybody else would want of them, and they have to be allowed to make up their own minds as to which things they do do.

It is not the place of schools to dictate what their students do when they are not learning, only to ensure that those students have the skills they require to do those things should they choose to.

I am in full agreement that schools are failing in their efforts to effectively pass on skills that children require, but that is a completely separate issue to the one of children having little or no interest in reading when not actually learning to read.

Take me, for example. After school stopped teaching me to read, I barely read two consecutive words that weren't on a computer screen, in a comic or a textbook until I read Jurassic Park at the age of 15. I could read perfectly well, I just wasn't inclined to do so. This was nothing to do with education, or the availability of reading material, simply that there were better options on offer for my time.

I'm reading (irony) that education no longer gets kids to my standard (which is not particularly high by any stretch). This needs to be rectified, but the responsibility of schools ends there. The day these institutions begin to take a hand in what they believe a child's preferences should be, is the day I leave for somewhere else.

I agree that the wider choice of other pastimes (like computer games, millions of TV channels, etc.) means that the popularity of reading is bound to take a bit of a nose dive for younger generations. School should not force preferences down people's throats, no. We've said before on other forums that the emphasis on words and numbers (i.e. academic intelligence) in our education system excludes a lot of kids who have other talents (and incidentally I think computer games do develop some important skills!).

What this article is suggesting is that the Literacy Strategy is too target-focused and has taken the passion and enjoyment out of reading. I think that's quite possible.

I remember observing the 'literacy hour' in a primary school not long after it was first introduced (when I was doing teacher training). It did just feel like something that had to be 'got through' to meet requirements. Kids weren't getting any individual attention and as the class was mixed ability it was a mess - half of them were learning nothing. That was my only limited experience of the literacy strategy in one primary school.

However, having taught English in secondary school, I would say there is enough flexibility for a teacher to be able to show their passion for literature and encourage kids (if it's in their nature) to also find a passion. But yeah, you need good teachers to be able to do that.

I don't know, it's a difficult one. Do you put it down to kids simply having too much other stuff to do? Or is the education system screwed? And no, of course not all parents place literacy at the top of their agenda, but to say they see parenting as an inconvenience is pretty damn insulting to the majority!

Cath

I always loved books and I loved reading but often at school that love was sorely tried when we had to analyse every book we were given. Every possible hidden meaning was teased out, every character trait discussed so that we actually lost all interest in the story itself. I'm not saying that this shouldn't be done because it is valuable to understand how a story works, but there needs to be more done to show children how much fun there is just in the act of reading. There are poems and stories that had a lasting impression on me because I was lucky enough to have a teacher who read to us with such enthusiasm that they came to life. We are becoming, or are rearing, a throw away generation. We want everything now but once we have it, we want something else. Children need to be encouraged to read because they want to read, choose the books they enjoy, and just love the story itself. As it is, libraries are cutting spending on books and putting money into computers. I think that's really sad. What is sadder still, is that some children have no books at home. Their parents have no books at home. I went to the same talk as Colin and I found it really quite shocking. How those parents can be encouraged to read, and to read to their children, I don't know, but that's where it needs to begin. The government have got a bookstart programme, where all babies are given a book. I'm not sure about this. Maybe it's better than nothing. Anthony Horowitz has had a rant about it: -

"The idea of Ruth Kelly giving children books from birth is repellent. It is not any of their business and secondly it is presumptuous.

"It presumes if you read you will become an upstanding member of society, which is arrant nonsense and slightly sinister.

"If you start controlling what people read and think from the moment they are born I think it is wrong. I recoil against this society that wants to pin medals on kids for reading. People have to come to the decision to read or not to read."

Sue

I know what you mean - I guess this is the effect the 'New Criticism' had on English lessons? (It never put me off English and reading, although it totally put me off Art!).

I don't think the Bookstart thing is a bad idea. I certainly don't think it presumes 'if you read you will become an upstanding member of society' - that's a ridiculous statement. It's simply a response to the fact there are still low literacy levels amongst the poorest kids. Everyone needs to be able to read to function in society and to get a decent all-round education. I guess what feels dodgy about it is the fact the books are getting chosen for the kids. It'd probably better to put the funding into libraries and the promotion of libraries so people are given incentives to go and browse for what books they want.

Cath

I think IB is bang on - it is the fault of the parents. But to take that a step further, it is also the fault of the role that the state is attempting to play as surrogate parents.

If you shove something down a person's throat - read this! - they will rebel and go for something else, such as computer games or TV. Now, we could just dismiss this as 'the easy' option or even 'dumbing down', but actually there is a lot than can be gained from computers and even, god forbid, TV.

The important thing is balance. But what the state doesn't understand is that to achieve this balance, there needs to be enjoyment and appreciation.

Skip talks about literacy hour seeming like a chore to teachers and kids alike. So of course they are going to enjoy playing around on the PC a lot more. At my kids' school, literacy is now being included as part of other learning, humanities, science etc, so it is part of the learning process rather than something that stands alone.

So when my kids come back from school with home work (which I think they are too youg for - 9 and 6 - but don't get me started on that) their approach to that project tends to be multi-media. They look at books, go on the internet, ask us (the parents) questions and pick up information from TV (there's some good TV out there - there's a lot of crap too, but strangely the real crap is the stuff I watched as a kid!).

To use IB's analogy, like sponges they are soaking up information from all quarters and using it in their work. The key is they enjoy all the different types of media, as well as being pretty smart at managing all this input.

School can help them apprecaite the different types of media, from books to pc, and set them task to they can make use of this spread of media. But it is WE as parents that have to esnure they have a balance.

And if "many parents today" don't have books at home, surely that is the fault of the circumstances a generation ago - the growth of TV, lowering of educational standards? - rather than a problem caused by the current government.

What I think the government and educators should stop doing is trying to gear everything back to league tables and results. When my daughter was seven she took her SATs and there were children in her class petrified of failing, getting poor marks and letting the school down.

That is more of a worry to me than a declining interest in books. Christ, these kids couldn't even sleep at night with worry, let alone sneak a torch into the bed so they could read a comic under the blankets. Anyone remember doing that?

The world is changing rapidly and an appreciation and ability with a wide range of technologies and media is vital. Of course kids need to read, but they need to enjoy reading just as they enjoy on-line gaming and downloading the crazy frog.

And parents are vital in ensuring this enjoyment and reducing the stress of the pressures of achievement, the need to succeed and get results that school seems to be drumming into them at - I believe - the behest of government and the legion of wanky think tanks and advisers who have little grasp of the real world.

As for a struggling publishing industry, my heart bleeds.

A decade back the music industry was declared dead on its feet, but now the introduction of downloading has not only given it a boost but also given other musicians and artists a forum and medium to promote their work via the net.

Publishing needs to do the same.

Actually, if one takes a step back, and considers the whole cloth of history, one will see that there are more books being published now than ever before, and thus, more people reading them.

This isn't the dark ages. I get a bit peeved when people regard the entirety of human evolution - statistically speaking - as happening in the last 100 years.

If one considers how we were in the Middle Ages compared to now, I don't see what there is to be so alarmist about. People love to read. They always will. Sure, there are more interactive arts now, but people can have more than one interest you know. There are plenty of kids who will play on Xbox, watch a movie, and when they get bored, sink into a Harry Potter.

As for the government, when has anyone listened to them? When I was growing up, I don't remember the government or the school having much to do with my private reading choices. Kids are not automatons who just do what they are told. Sure, in lessons you may study a book and hate it. I think to suggest that will put you of the entirety of literature is a gross exaggeration.

JB

This isn't the dark ages. I get a bit peeved when people regard the entirety of human evolution - statistically speaking - as happening in the last 100 years. If one considers how we were in the Middle Ages compared to now, I don't see what there is to be so alarmist about. People love to read. They always will.

JB, you're so, so right!

I think the literacy hour can have a deadening effect, but everyone moaned about how schools didn't foster reading before that, just as much. At the Historical Novel Society Conference a startlingly high proportion of people talked of how utterly they'd been turned off by school History, only to be turned straight back on to it by historical fiction, so one aspect of their education must have worked!

My children read, and play on computers and use them for homework too. They also listen to a lot of books on tape/CD. But there's no denying that screens win over pages most of the time. They are horribly compelling, and at the risk of sounding sexist, my experience is that it's the Y chromosome that can make a child more vulnerable to that addiction. I'm not a draconian parent on most things, but I do limit the TV-and-computer-time, with their slightly reluctant but understanding consent, because otherwise they would do almost nothing else. And computer games, particularly, are very carefully and expensively designed to be as addictive as possible.

If you're going to blame parents, I'm sure it's not that they don't want their children to do other things. It's that their lives are so busy and fragmented that they don't have the time or the energy for the war of attrition that it is to divert children from screens. You have to be constantly vigilant, and, if you want to avoid screaming matches, imaginative in the ways you use to divert them. And speaking for myself, by the time I've coped with the household's income, expenditure, catering, health, cleanliness, tidiness, education and stocks of loo paper, and then written a novel, I find that vigilance, energy and imagination are in short supply.

Emma

I'm neither a parent nor a teacher, but I've noticed that children who are introduced to books when they're very young, tend to return to books later, though they may have had 'better' things to do in the intervening years. I've got friends who were read to when they were little, and read a lot when they were, say, 7 to 10 years old; then they got lots of new hobbies, developed an interest in the opposite sex, got absorbed in their studies, etc., etc. and of course there were the usual distractions of films, television, and computer games. Now that we're in our early twenties, these friends seem to have settled down, and suddenly they're reading more widely again.

So I'm not really worried if teenagers get sidetracked -- I think they're programmed to do so!* I buy books to my friends' babies for their birthdays and Christmases. Catch them when they're too young to escape, that's my motto.



*) I didn't get sidetracked when I was a teenager, but in all fairness, I was extremely proud of my bookishness, and I'd decided early on that I would become a writer, so I didn't have much choice. I didn't read merely for enjoyment -- there was a great deal of obstinate single-mindedness in it, too.