Children spend less than an hour a day reading at school and many do not pick up a book at all during lessons, a study of reading habits has found.
I doff my cap to no-one in my desire for every single kid to discover, as I did aged six, the unconfined joy that becoming absorbed by a book which clutches you in its thrall can inspire. But let’s take a closer look at the Torygraph article:
The lack of time devoted to books at school, and the sorry state of many school libraries as revealed in a damning Ofsted report, in March may be among the reasons why many children have so little regard for reading.
Well, it may be - though as the survey shows 81% of kids spend up to an hour or more each day engaged in reading at school, I’m drawn to the attitude that home/parental attitudes are far more influential. A child who grows up in a house with no books is less likely to appreciate their value than one surrounded by literature (regardless of whether those books are Jackie Collins and Dan Brown, or Charles Dickens and the Encyclopaedia Britannica).
It’s just a little ironic to see the Torygraph instantly blame schools (and, by extension, the state) for this failure, and implicitly argue for greater state intervention to boost standards.
Many of the pupils surveyed were bemused by the question "Is reading your favourite activity?" Eighty-five per cent responded in the negative and cited watching television, playing computer games and socialising with friends as their main priorities.
Kids, eh… Well, what did the researchers expect? And what would they find if they asked the kids’ parents? - I bet boozing (or ‘socialising with friends’, as we would more euphemistically term it) would be higher up the list. To be honest, I’m quite surprised that up to 15% of those questioned appear to have answered positively that reading is their favourite hobby. I think I’d have said ‘playing football’ in my mis-spent youth.
A number of children thought
And as for the notion that any child has the faintest notion of who Bob Marley is… it says much about the Telegraph’s idea of which popular beat combo artistes are down wiv da kidz.
The American rap artist Eminem was named by some as the author of To Kill a Mocking Bird.
We did not plan it to be this way, your mother and me,
But things have gotten so bad between us
I don't see us ever being together ever again,
Like we used to be when we was teenagers.
But then of course everything always happens for a reason -
I guess it was never meant to be -
But it's just something we have no control over, and that's what destiny is.
But no more worries, rest your head and go to sleep.
Maybe one day we'll wake up and this will all just be a dream.
The Telegraph continues:
… a number of girls said they read magazines, not books, and one 14-year-old listed the Radio Times among her favourite reads of the year. Other chosen works included The Exorcist, The
Lost in the Telegraph’s survey is any acceptance that the popular culture which envelopes today’s kids is vastly more intelligent than that which existed when I were a lad. Last year, the
His thesis is straightforward: that what is making us smarter is precisely what we thought was making us dumber: popular culture. Mr Johnson examines two components, video games and television, and draws the same conclusions from his study of each - that society's greater exposure to these cultural stimuli is ramping up our individual brainpower, both our intellectual and our emotional intelligence. He terms this counter-intuitive riff the 'Sleeper Curve', a hat-tip towards the famous Woody Allen joke from his mock sci-fi film where a team of scientists from 2029 are astounded that 20th-century society failed to grasp the nutritional merits of cream pies and hot fudge.
3 comments:
This is getting tedious. I'm afraid I agree with you again Cllr Tall!
An hour a day is quite a long time in a young child's life and certainly enough to develop their reading ability. Any more than that and you'll put them off.
A lot is definitely down to parents. Those children who are read books by their parent/s from an early age and have lots of books around the home will generally end up as readers themselves and those that don't won't.
Given that the ability to read plays such a large part in a person's ability to access education as a whole it also has a huge impact on educational attainment overall.
We always have encouraged reading, and we make sure we read to them before bed. (Which is fine by me as long as they keep enjoying Dr Who books!).
There are plenty of great books for children - Dr Seuss and Enid Blyton are current favourites in our house - but I have to say I wouldn't inflict Wuthering Heights on anyone - well possibly the Kate Bush version ;-)
Thank you for reminding me what a silly world view the Telegrpah has.
Such consensus really isn't liberal, Neil... Don't worry, I'll put up another post urging BBC privatisation or market tuition fees soon to get your gander up ;-)
Didn't you know that schools are to blame for everything....?
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