We know the obvious and less obvious benefits children can glean from developing a life-long love of reading – the widening and deepening of knowledge and understanding, the ability to empathise, to explore and discover, to be comforted, excited and challenged, to spur confidence and creativity. Like many storymakers, I speak of all this often in the hope that we provoke debate and ultimately contribute to the enriching of children’s lives, and life chances, through a love of stories. That’s my hope.
I can bemoan the closing of libraries, the homes where parents don’t read to their children, the schools where stories are used simply as fodder for teaching literacy to the test. I could blame successive governments who have indulged in short-termism in their education policies and insist that measurable outcomes and results are the be-all and end-all of the education process, who often make a chore out of reading and succeed so often only in banishing enjoyment. But that would be passing the buck.
We live in a democracy; we choose our governments. We are all of us in some way responsible for the successes and failures of our literacy and our society, for they are, as we know, intimately connected. Indeed, I think it could be said that literacy, or the lack of it, helps divide us, and separates those who have from those who have not, those who feel they belong and those who feel alienated. The truth is that over the years, the centuries, reading among our children has grown, but sadly it has not been all-inclusive. And that has been the great failure on our part.
HOPE AND DETERMINATION
Out of the horrors of the Second World War came a peace built on hope, and a determination to extend rights and power to everyone, through education, knowledge and ideas. There were ever more libraries, and bookshops, and the 1944 Education Act ensured a better education for our young.
More and more publishers were bringing out children’s books, of all sorts, and more and more people were reading, writing and selling them. Now all of us, irrespective of income, geography or background, were going to enjoy the benefits of reading and enjoying books, and through books to aspire, to follow a pathway to fulfilment.
I was reading these books – and comics too – and listening to children’s radio from about 1948. But there was no library at St Matthias, my Church of England, LCC school in West London, no books for enjoyment, just school text books, readers. I had loved stories before I went there, because my mother read to us. I longed for our storytime with her, loved books, loved stories. School killed all that, took the wonder of stories, the music and playfulness of language and turned it all into a ‘subject’, to be used for comprehension tests, handwriting tests, grammar tests, spelling tests and punctuation tests. In these tests, at least as many of us failed as succeeded. That’s the point of tests, to separate those who pass from those who fail. Testing is supposed to encourage both. It doesn’t.
When you fail it brings fear, shame and anxiety. It rocks confidence, ruins self-esteem. You disappoint yourself, disappoint others. You give up. I gave up. To give up on books is to give up on education, and if you give up on education, then you can so easily give up on hope, and your future.
Turning children away from books and reading can be a life sentence, a life without books. So many avenues are barred, so many possibilities never imagined, so many discoveries never made, so much understanding of yourself, of others, stunted for ever. But I was lucky. I was granted a second chance.
I had a mother who passed on to me her love of words, stories and poems. I had enough wonderful teachers at school and university to begin to restore my confidence. They helped grow the seed that had almost died in me. I was fortunate indeed.
AN APARTHEID SYSTEM
I later became a teacher, yet despite my best efforts and those of libraries, publishers, great writers and illustrators, thousands upon thousands of talented teachers and devoted parents, there still exists an apartheid system of a kind in this country, between those who through books can access the cultural and material benefits of our society; and those who were made to feel very early on that the world of books, stories and ideas was not for them, that they were not clever enough to join that world, that it was not the world they belonged to, that it was shut off from them for ever. In the country of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Hughes, Dahl, Pullman and Rowling, the great divide is still there – maybe not wider, but shamefully still there.
As a teacher, writer and campaigner, I may, I hope, have helped some children to become readers for life. But not enough. Our prisons are full of those we have failed. Many remain marginalised all their lives. The right book, author, parent, teacher, librarian, at the right time, might have made the difference, shone a light into a dark life, turned that life around.
So, in spite of the best intentions of politicians, the whole publishing world, libraries, theatres, parents, all of us, to reach out and include, millions of our children still feel excluded and alienated.
What are we to do? Well, it’s obvious. It’s the story, stupid! We know what works and it really is simple. Mum and dad reading and telling stories; teachers being given the time and space to do the same; a good library in every school, and in the community; writers, storytellers and illustrators visiting schools, telling their tales, drawing their pictures, singing their songs; theatres reaching out to family audiences and coming into schools with their productions; shows being put on at prices families can afford.
HORSE BEFORE CART
So what more can we do? Just talking about it certainly doesn’t put it right. Here are a few notions that cost very little or nothing:
- Do not ever close libraries, in or out of school – make them better. Librarians, teachers, parents need the tools to do the job.
- Read a story to every child at bedtime every night.
- Let there be half an hour of storytime at the end of school in every primary school. Choose an author the children love. Call that half hour Philip Pullman time, or Quentin Blake, David Walliams, Roald Dahl, Julia Donaldson or David Almond time, or Shirley Hughes, JK Rowling, Judith Kerr, Michael Rosen, ‘Michael Morpingo’ time if you’re desperate, whoever you like. But make this the half hour that all children long for, that they don’t want to be over.
- Invite parents and grandparents, people from the local and world community to come in to tell their own stories. Make storytime at the end of the day a special, fun time, devoted entirely to reading, writing, storytelling, drama. No testing, comprehension, analysis, interrogation. Let the children go home dreaming of the story, reliving it, wondering.
All that matters at that early age is that they learn to love stories, that they want to hear, read, tell, write, act out, sing, dance stories. Encourage parents, unchain the teachers, take away the fear. Children have to want to learn. So, give them the love of story first – the rest, the literacy side of things, will come later. You cannot force-feed children with literacy. Horse before cart, horse before cart.
Books have the power to transform the lives of children, to release their own creative energy and genius. We do not need convincing of this. But I have, I hope, reminded us of that power.
This is an edited extract from the inaugural BookTrust Annual Lecture given by author and former children’s laureate Michael Morpurgo at the Guildhall, London on 21 September
MORE INFORMATION
- www.booktrust.org.uk
- www.michaelmorpurgo.com
- Look out for Nursery World’s occasional series ‘Meet the author’, looking at the life and works of some of our best picture book authors
