It may say more about my middle-class values, but I found the NLT report one of the most horrifying stories of the week, in a week when torture in care homes, repression in Yemen, the gaoling of a Tory peer, and a government report placing a monetary value on trees and fields were all in the news. It suggests that millions of British children will never know the joy of opening a book for the first time, becoming enveloped by its pages, reading by torchlight under the duvet, and closing it with complete satisfaction. For them, Harry Potter, the Big Friendly Giant, Alex Rider and Horrid Henry will remain strangers.
There is of course a utilitarian argument. As a post-industrial country we can’t afford a generation which can’t read and write properly. Sending illiterate teenagers into mills, down mines, into the navy or into domestic service is no longer an option. In the modern economy, literacy is the only route to getting a rewarding job, and the only way our economy can grow. But there’s also an argument about the spiritual and intellectual wellbeing of a child. Reading is freedom. It sends the imagination racing. It is the means to stretch the boundaries of feeling and emotion. That it is being denied to so many is a disgrace. It may not be the ‘child abuse’ that Alan Bennett claimed this week, but it’s not far off.
It would be easy to blame the digital economy, but this is nonsense. A nine-year-old child (I happen to have one at home) can enjoy computer games, playing football and reading books in equal measure. Mine has spent the half-term holidays ploughing through seven Harry Potters one after the other, reading in bed until he falls asleep under the book. He’s also enjoyed FIFA 11 on the Wii and endless games of footie in the park.
Some might blame poverty. There is a link between being poor and not having books in the house. But this is cultural, not financial. A second-hand book from a charity shop is still a manageable purchase, even for the most impoverished families. Libraries still exist in most parts of the country. Schools lend their pupils books. Catalogues such as thebookpeople.com sell box sets at discount prices: for example six Beast Quests for £6.99, or 15 Roald Dahls for £15.99, which means Matilda, Willy Wonka, George’s Marvellous Medicine, and Danny, the Champion of the World can be yours for a little over a pound per book. If adults want their children to have books, they can. The saddest aspect of the NLT report is that the millions of children without books are also without a mother, father, uncle or aunt to give them a book. Without getting all Daily Mail, it plainly is the fault of the parents if children have no books, but then the parents are unlikely to have well-stocked shelves either.
Book buying, collecting and reading is one of life’s greatest pleasures. From an early age, I was scouring church jumble sales for Pan edition James Bonds (at 10p each), Sherlock Holmes or Arthur Bryant histories. When I moved to London, I would spend hours along the Charing Cross Road at Quinto or Any Amount of Books, picking up second-hand history and politics books. On Saturdays it was the Amnesty bookshop on King Street, Hammersmith, My Back Pages in Balham, Copperfields in Wimbledon, Judd Books in King’s Cross, or the Gloucester Road bookshop. Early editions of William Morris, RH Tawney, GDH Cole, Harold Laski and the Webbs could be picked up for a song. Book collectors live for the ‘find’ – a book long sought-after to make up a set, a signed edition, or a valuable book hidden among the cheap ones. I love finding a book with a postcard or letter among the pages, unread for 70 or 80 years, or a plate denoting that this book was a school prize awarded to Nina Goodwin in 1923. I am pathologically incapable of walking past an Oxfam bookshop without going in.
The middle classes have long understood the causal link between books in the home, and academic and material success. Access to dictionaries, encyclopaedias and atlases confers immediate advantage when it comes to homework or revision. Knowledge of literature, history and science gleaned from books makes a child more likely to be able to use the vast resources of the internet in an intelligent and creative way.
The National Literacy Trust has done us a great service by pointing out this national shame. It may not have grabbed us by the lapels in quite the same way as Panorama’s undercover cameramen, or the war correspondents in Hasaba or Taiz, but it should be of equal concern to ministers and their shadows. Anyone seeking to make our citizens more socially mobile should start with books in the home.
you don’t surely expect poor kids to read Harry Potter do you ,they’ve got more sense.Have you ever listened to the unremittingly good, ferociously poetic,expressive grime/hip hop,etc lyrics for example, Joyce would be proud ! even graffiti is essentially word orientated.So easy now,remember the novel itself as with all other art forms is in dire straights du jour, people talk about it being over,after all it began one day so it could end. Very possibly youngsters are being led to the wrong things to read,you know the extraordinary black sensibility for three dimensionality in music ‘beats’ belies the fact they have no ability for structural complexity.
Surely it does not matter what kids read, as long as they are reading. Be that a cereal box, computer games, board games, tv advertisements or magazines. I found one of the best ways to encourage my daughter to read (an she has plenty of books) were games on the Wii or DS. Also used a game called TRUGs, http://www.readsuccessfully.com and because I have used these different mediums, it has a developed a love reading and so she enjoys reading books more and more now. Young children are given books and I know of other schemes around to encourage reading and learning. Surely we need to re-educate a lot of the parents and that the lack of books is not because of the current generation, but the lack of understanding in when the parents of today were children.
Paul, Excellent article. Books (I was from a poor background) kept me sane and enabled me to teach myself far more than was being tought in my local school during the John Major “Back to basics” assault on learning. By 13 I had read the iliad, the Odysea, my first book ever was Helen Keller a story about persevering against incredible challenges. She became my greatest heroine at the tender age of 8 or 9. Books, reading Law books kept me sane in what was a very lonely time in the armed forces and helped me to test myself thanks to the Open University the great Labour Party accomplishment that I owe more than just my learning to. It still served me well today though i was unable to complete the course due to other life challenges later on. It was a lack of decent book provision and resources that hampered my A-Level learning and frustrated my first degree and their availability to all is for me a definite must. Learning to enjoy books is the first task though and encouraging people of all ages to read a rewarding book whether it be fiction, non-fiction, fantasy or hard factual anlysis is something we should be doing with the kids. Learning has to be fun not a necessary strain, but a joy and one that needs to be encouraged at all times. Wonderful article fella.
Congratulations National Literacy Trust for highlighting the scandal of illiteracy in London. That a million adult Londoners can’t read and write properly damages both our society and the individuals who cannot operate effectively in our city. Improving children’s literacy is important but even more so is tackling the problem of the illiteracy of adults who are so ashamed that they opt out of society and the economy. The Government is little concerned. Look at the recent White Paper, Giving (Cm 8084), which seeks to involve the usual hard-to-reach groups in volunteering their time and effort in the service of the community. But it fails to seek ways to engage adult illiterates, many of whom would like to “give”, but are inhibited by their inability to read and write. They could make a useful contribution. They need encouragement and to be shown they are valued. Above they need to be taught how to read and write. Perhaps volunteers in the Big Society should be encouraged to teach them.
One of the beat articles I have read for a long time.The Labour Party should start a campaign to get every child in Britain a book before Christmas 2001? Please put my name to the campsign.We are bereft of projects,this is a Socialist one .The Tories thrive when we are stupid and ignorant.Most of us are Socialists because we could read.Think on these lines
Socialists because we could read ! not me mate, I began on that route when I could see my father was wrong to vote Tory and hate black people and the poor and it didn’t seem to be like what Jesus said you should be like and the unfairness handed out in the world, beginning from about the age of five!