23rd July How to Get Children Reading Again by Emma Jacobs

This is the title of an article which appeared in the Financial Review on the 18th July. It was written by Emma Jacobs who is a London-based freelance journalist, producer and researcher. She  writes features with a particular focus on work, changes in the workplace and office life, but here she is writing about the future of reading, reading for pleasure, libraries, and bookstores.

Emma started her article by citing a school in England that makes every effort to remind students of the joy of books. They are read to every day, visited by authors and encouraged to pick out books to enjoy in their own time. Nicki Duckett, the teacher who oversees reading at the school, which has as its ambition to marry the “skill” and the “will” to read. In the 20 years she has worked in education, she has observed how the proliferation of gaming and smartphones, a busy school day, plus extracurricular clubs and activities create “more demands on children’s time”.

This is true in Australia too. Schools organise extracurricular clubs before and after school and even at Lunchtime. Students have their time managed for them by their parents and their school. Students are no longer allowed to be 'bored'.

Emma quotes English research that shows that children’s reading enjoyment has sunk to its “lowest point in two decades”, but then adds the decline in Britain is emblematic of a trend across the Western world.  The English government is reviewing the curriculum and under its broader “plan for change”, there are “ambitious targets to ensure more children start school ready to read”.

Emma talks about the provision of school libraries and how their numbers are reducing. She mentions the difference between girls (39.1%) and boys (25.7%) who read for pleasure. She states that from birth, parents are less likely to buy books as presents for boys than girls or to take boys to a library.

The article then goes on to look at some initiatives that are being trialled in the hope that reading joy is experienced by more people, but like the two previous newspaper articles that I commented upon, here and here, she emphasises that reading with children also helps cultivate good habits. She cites these figures, a minority, 41% of under-fours are read to frequently, down from 64% in 2012. 

So another article that is imploring adults to read to children more often! Teachers give parents permission to do this, they constantly remind them to, but when will education authorities and schools give teachers permission to read to students more than they are now?

Students need to be able to touch and read physical books. This means parents and teachers need to read from books, not devices, they need to visit libraries and bookstores (not online bookstores), there needs to be books in every classroom, some extracurricular clubs need to be using books, adults need to be passionate and proactive about reading and not make it an addendum 'if we have time'. Reading or being sent to the library should not be a punishment ...'if you don't finish your work you can go to the library to do it'.

Why have schools stopped their USSR (Uninterrupted Silent Sustained Reading) or DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) times? Schools that still have them are doing so much better in the reading for pleasure realm.