Libraries for all!

I’m sure many of your will have noticed that The Society of Authors has written to  schools minister Nick Gibb offering advice on how to support reading and literacy in education. The full letter is full of common sense suggestions – ideas that are absolutely achievable, that are not cost heavy, and that will make an immediate and noticeable impact.

SoA’s letter urges Gibb to support children’s literacy by making school libraries a statuary requirement in both primary and secondary schools. Wait, what? The news that it wasn’t legal requirement to have a library in schools was a complete shock to me. My experience has largely been in the primary system and all the schools that I have been lucky enough to spend time with have had a library – or at least a space dedicated to reading.

A school without a library? Throw out the chairs and chalk as well. The importance of libraries should not to be underestimated; whilst they may not have the formality of the classroom they are teaching and learning environments where children are exposed to new and exciting ideas, where they grapple with the unknown, and where, most importantly they embrace an independence of action and intention.

Unless you are lying prone on the floor with books being flung at your head, it is very difficult to be a passive learner in a library. Children must decide on the books they want to read, seek them out, browse titles, stretch fingertips up to top shelves and crouch into boxes bursting with books. They hide in corners, slump into cushions or secrete the newly found gems into book bags, satchels, under jumpers or down trousers (it has been known).

This is just my library at home. Natch.

SoA general secretary Nicola Solomon told Gibb that school libraries and services have been ‘undervalued and neglected’ over the past decade and furthermore cites the 2010 School Libraries Commission survey that suggests that ‘young people who read above the expected level for their age are twice as likely as young people who read below their age to be school library users.’

I have a moment’s hesitation here – I’m not sure forcing children who don’t read into the library is necessarily the way forward. Which brings me to SoA’s second point. Teachers must be supported in encouraging reading for pleasure. Apparently 3.8 million children in the UK do not own a book. 1 in 3. Say that out loud. One child in every three does not own a book. Ten children in every class. Not even Where’s Wally. And that doesn’t even have words. And if children have the pester power to earn themselves Flufflings and Kung Zhu Hamster’s then surely if they really wanted they could nag, beg, and worry for half an hour in Waterstones? Before we give children books, they have to want them.

Reading for learning is a different beast to reading for deciphering. I have already made my views very clear on phonics. And whole heartedly agree with SoA’s second point. Teachers must inspire a love of reading in their fledgling book-worms. I was lucky enough to undertake my PGCE at the University of Cambridge’s where the course has achieved outstanding in all areas and the tutors are dedicated to promoting a love of literature, not just of letters. But this is not yet standard. If the government are willing to legislate on phonics then surely reading for pleasure should receive the same treatment? If teachers lead by example then children will follow into an infinity of imagined universes, and what better education then one that can continue once the school gates are long distant?

SoA’s final point is one that is music to the Hot Key Ears. Author visits should be OFSTED accredited – they should not be seen as time ‘lost’ from learning, but moments to build memories. School visits are so important, whether from an author, illustrator, publisher or any other industry expert. I spent 6 weeks in a school where the local librarian’s  visit was the most exciting thing that happened that term.He showed off his shiny books, he read a story and the children joined in. There were no pyrotechnics, no blow-up football goals (I was also witness to the chaos of this assembly) and there were no dancing girls (X-Factor you have driven these children’s expectations so high that if Nicki Minaj isn’t cavorting semi-naked behind the Head delivering the Monday morning notices they are sorely disappointed). But the children loved him. They adored him. And they all wanted to read the books he so kindly left behind.

We can only hope that Nick Gibb pays heed to Nicola Solomon’s excellent letter. She is spot on. Forget stricter discipline, longer working hours, or lengthy phonics tests. What children need are books, a place to read them, and a spark of inspiration. Universal access to great libraries must be the first stepping stone along this path.

Phonics: failing or flying?

Before I found my way into the world of publishing I toyed with the idea of becoming a primary school teacher. I knew that I loved working with children and that I was passionate about their education. It took me a while to work out that although I loved teaching, I really wanted to be at the centre of creating books rather than on the receiving end of the magic they could inspire.

The year I spent with the Faculty of Education in Cambridge was incredible. I learnt the ins and outs of how to be an outstanding practitioner (even if I rarely, if ever, met those heights). I met children whose faces and stories will stay with me forever, and other teachers whose dedication to their profession and to the children in their care was absolutely inspirational. I could happily have stayed in the classroom sharing the joy of reading and of exploring learning with those children, probably forever, were it not for one thing.

I really took issue with the impending tidal wave of bureaucratic tests and examinations that the 5 and 6 year olds that I cared, very deeply, about were facing. A recent government initiative has not only made it a daily requirement that children spend an hour on ‘phonics’  (the methodical decoding of words through ‘segmenting’ and ‘blending’ sounds – find out more here), but has recently introduced statutory tests that require 6 year olds to decipher lists of nonsense words.  It was bad enough that by the time they had finished higher education they would have gone through 6, or even 8, consecutive years of examinations, but for these children who were barely able to tie their own shoelaces?  Michael Rosen’s recent ‘Letter from a curious parent’ raised some fundamentally important questions. Directed at the Education Secretary Michael Gove, Rosen asks, what do we want of our children?

Do we want to reduce them to statistical anomalies? To measure their success and potential through an arbitrary and subjective test – so that their failings can be used to support or undermine political policy? Or do we want to encourage them to risk failure on their own terms in an attempt to discover a new and more complex understanding of the world?

Should we be teaching our children to read books like they might maps – with systematic deconstruction and impassive logic? Or should we be encouraging an emotional investment in characters and narratives?

If a child fails to decode a random nonsense word without the context to suggest meaning and intent – but can write fluent and richly woven (but badly spelt) stories, should they be classified as a less successful learner?

From personal experience I can vouch for those enthusiastic little storytellers, who believe in the power of books and of reading, but haven’t quite got those as, is and es sorted out yet. I’m so glad my teachers encouraged my voracious reading and writing, confident that the spelling would come, once the rush to get these pressing ideas out in wobbled sentences had abated. What’s more, being diagnosed as dyslexic a few years later made sense of my inability to string a legible sentence together on the page – proof I think that phonetical deconstruction is not necessarily the first rung on the ladder of reading. Bad spelling is not an impediment to the process of reading as an entirety.

Ultimately phonics is one single stilt in the framework of reading. It’s very, very useful in helping children begin to decode, and to build confidence in their reading and writing abilities. But alongside the systematic deconstruction of the English language rests the skills of empathy, imagination and vision. Phonics is one way of learning to read that works for many children, but not by any means, all of them.

Reading requires children to be a little bit brave – they need to jump into the unknown with every unfamiliar story and book, aware that within any narrative they are opening themselves up to the peculiarities of an author’s imagination. Death, loss, failure, misery – these are themes that children meet alongside magic, fantasy, joy and love. We should be encouraging our emerging readers to make that leap into the unknown through encouragement and independent exploration, rather than throwing them blindly into the canyons of failure as throwaway statistics. Reading is not about failing, it is about flying.