Michael Gove
A model reader? (Illustration by Christopher Healy)
The pronouncement by UK’s Education Secretary , Michael Gove that children as young as 11 should read 50 books a year is just plain daft.
I recognise the need to improve literacy standards but setting a quota system is typical of the Tory mindset wherein everything is measurable in statistical terms alone.
If Gove’s dictum was logical it would mean that higher and speedier the consumer, the brighter the child.
Any parent or teacher who tries to impose such standards on children are more likely to put them off reading for life. If kids read only to reach a set target or to get better grades, what motivation will they have to continue reading when they reach adulthood.
When I was 11, I read some novels by Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton but a lot of the time I read comics like The Beano and The Dandy or soccer magazines. These may not have been intellectually improving works but I learned that through reading I could keep myself entertained; this was important for , as Jonathan Franzen wrote in his essay ‘The Reader In Exile’,: “the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone”.
Only after I left school at 17 did I discover what could objectively be deemed more ‘serious’ writers like Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Mervyn Peake, Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka . I discovered these writers not necessarily because they were part on any curriculum or on some expert’s reading list but because I was curious and once you read one book that makes an impression it’s natural to want to seek more of the same.
Inevitably, lists of 50 books children should read are circulating in blogs and newspapers. These are almost exclusively works of fiction as if science, history and biographies don’t count. Such lists of approved books add another level of anxiety for potential readers. The message they give is that it’s not enough to hit the number 50, they’ve also got to be worthy titles.
Gove’s dictum also begs the following questions:
- Does size matter? e.g Is Harry Potter book one (224 pages) worth more points than book seven (608 pages)?
- If you read a single volume anthology of a writer’s works (Twilight, Potter etc) does this count as one or more books?
- Is an abridged (reader’s digest style) work cheating?
- Are you allowed to skim the boring bits?
- Does a graphic novel count?
- Does online fan fiction count?
- Are people who don’t read automatically deemed illiterate and/or less intelligent?
A list of questions in this vein is potentially endless and highlights the idiocy of Gove’s statement. It would have made more sense to recommend that children devote around an hour a day reading without imposing targets.
You cannot make children find pleasure in the printed word nor should judgement be passed on what they read .
Ultimately it comes down to the fact that quality is preferable to quantity and ‘quality’ is a relative concept which you can only hope to define by first reading a healthy amount of crap!
Related Articles
- Which 50 books should be on a school reading list? (guardian.co.uk)
- Reading By Numbers (literacyadviser.wordpress.com)
- Children ‘should read 50 books a year’, says Gove (telegraph.co.uk)
- The 50 books every child should read (independent.co.uk)
Absolute ludicrous..as you rightly say…forcing kids to read will put them off reading for life….both my kids enjoyed reading in their own time…..this doesnt surprise me in the slightest from this goverment..great post…Eliza Keating
Thanks for the endorsement, Eliza – glad to hear that your kids are happy quota-free readers! 🙂
I have to agree that as soon as you tell children they have to do something, many will resist! A list of fifty books doesn’t recognise the child as an individual.
Thanks Siobhan – yes, and children would be right to resist in this case.
It also occurs to me that getting hold of this magic fifty books will be costly too especially as the same government are effectively endorsing the closure of many libraries.
How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.
D.H. Lawrence
Thanks for sharing those wise words, Rachael.
D.H. Lawrence’s advice certainly takes the onus off parents and educators!!
I do think the ‘less is more’ approach is just as likely to work when it comes to reading. Just being told ‘it’s cool to read’ won’t work because the people doing the telling are not perceived as ‘cool’ and using force or manipulation is doomed to failure.
“Leave them alone” might sound like the easy option for those responsible for children but actually it’s much more difficult to trust children to learn of their own accord rather than imposing education because it’s taking a leap of faith, which most of us aren’t programmed to do. Also, it involves ‘teaching’ by example and providing the environment & resources to facilitate learning, along with loads of patience and tolerance. Far easier to load them into schools and spoon-feed the same information to them all. Obviously many parents don’t have the confidence, resources or time to reject conventional education – which is why school is necessary. As adults who have been through the system, we are conditioned to believe this is how it SHOULD be. For many children, school turns learning into a chore and they switch off to it. Children are naturally curious about the world and, left to their own devices (but with support), will find their way and grow into their natural selves. School tends to knock natural impulses out of children, encouraging conformity, treating childhood like a training period for a pre-defined adulthood. Most of us are robbed of real life experience until we’re thrown out into the world at the onset of adulthood. Why isn’t Gove prescribing something that will actually help people live in the world? Actually, the government would do us all a favour if it could just mind its own business – which isn’t telling us how to spend our time! Holy ****, what next?
Nothing much I can add to this, Rachael; except to say: ‘right on’!! 😎