I just
wanted to share a sobering experience I had working with a young student as a
private tutor a few years ago as she was studying for her GCSEs.
I had mainly
been called in to help her with her maths but from time to time when we’d
finished a topic before our hour was up, I helped her with her English. Not as
much as I’d hoped as it turned out. Her set book was Silas Marner and I
would ask her what she had been discussing about the book in her lessons at
school. Inevitably her replies would be along the lines of, ‘We’ve been
discussing themes/characters/plot/setting/use of language etc. etc. etc.’ So, I
would question her about these issues for a while before our lesson ended.
By the time
we had our last weekly lesson she had finished all her maths exams and the
following day had her English paper. Since we had an hour to devote to Silas
Marner rather than a few minutes, instead of reiterating our previous
discussions, I thought it would be useful to get her into gear by reading as
much of the book as we could. We alternated, reading separate pages and got
through a small but significant portion of the novel. As we finished my student
innocently declared, “It’s quite a good really, isn’t it?”
She had
never actually read the book.
It was a
stark demonstration of the way that so often the children are made to analyse a
novel to death… in this and probably many other cases without ever reading the
book. Little wonder that some many children lose an interest in reading, in
many cases at a very early age. It still depresses me how few children I ask
know what a Heffalump is. In my opinion the correct means of discovering this
should be part of the National Curriculum!
Ever after
that lesson if I was called upon to help a student with their set novel, I made
sure we started by reading the book, or as much of it as we could, before doing
anything else. They could have the soul taken out of the piece at school but
not on my watch anymore. I remember reading Of Mice and Men with an able
15-year-old. It was clearly the first decent book he had read in the whole of
his life. Also unenthusiastically helping 10-year-olds answer endless questions
about segments from Alice in Wonderland (despite them never having read
the book) and wondering if I had sold my soul to the devil for the sake of
paying the gas bill. My only comfort being the knowledge that if I’d had my way*
I would have read the novel to them instead.
*And didn’t
have a gas bill.
4 comments:
Well done for checking on the essentials, Steve!
I suppose the problem is that teachers have their schedule of work related to the title to get through - and the children then have the task-related homework - so there's no way to halt the system and expect everyone to read the book, esp if sets of the books are no longer available.
Maybe it's simpler to feed all of the class or age-group the "reading" of a set title by important extracts & points & video-versions, even if this, in turn. encourages the students, busy with so much including their own lives, to not bother. (I don't know what the situation is about taking study texts into an exam these days, Is it on or off?)
But great to hear of your students learning to read and enjoy the book itself!
On the utility bills plunging straight towards us,
to paraphrase a famous line from 'Jaws'...
You're going to need a bigger soul.
Great blog, Steve! When I was a teacher (Junior school) my favourite part of the day was reading books I'd really enjoyed to the children in my class. They all enjoyed it too, and I'm sure that enjoyment led many of them to find the books (in the library?) and read them for themselves. It has been such a retrograde step to no longer allow teachers the time to read to the class - and your blog just proves the point! Many thanks.
Dear Penny, Andrew and Lynne,
Thank you for your comments.
I do think, even at secondary school but absolutely at primary school there should be half-an-hour at least a day set aside for reading or being read to and it's sad that even in primary schools that that is not possible any more.
Your comment about needing a bigger soul Andrew got me thinking firstly that this winter Hell might be the only warm place. Then I wondered what Satan's bill would be like. Maybe it would finally be an example of hell freezing over!
I don't know if you remember that first few food banks opening up? I remember the furore and everyone saying wasn't terrible that a rich nation like the UK had to have some food banks... and shouldn't we do something about it. Of course the only thing that was done about it - out of necessity - was to open more food banks. And the furore died down. It seems this winter many 'warm banks' will be opened, places where people can go to stay warm. How long before they become ubiquitous too?
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