Lamenting the Loss of Storytime by Lynne Benton

 I’ve just been reading an excellent article about the loss of Storytime in schools, and I agree with every word.  In former times Storytime was part of every child’s day at school, if not in their homes too.  When I started teaching, in the sixties and seventies, I read to the class for the last part of every afternoon, and it was a time the children, and I, enjoyed most.  I loved being able to introduce my classes to some of my favourite books and authors, and see them absorb the different stories, many of which they may not have found any other way.  In fact I can still remember many of the stories I was introduced to at school, in even earlier times, when a daily Storytime was considered part of a child’s education.

Patrick Ryan, in the latest edition of “Books for Keeps”, quotes from his new book, Story Listening & Experience in Early Childhood: 

“Teachers, librarians and educational philosophers at the turn of the twentieth century articulated a commonly held view: that folk and fairy tales ‘fostered’ and ‘directed’ children’s imaginations,” he says.  As early as 1882 it was asserted that ‘Every teacher should be an excellent storyteller, so as to make the half hour each day given to storytelling, a delightful one to the children.’ It was observed that “children who listened to stories regularly and frequently were better at developing vocabulary, comprehension, and what we now call critical literacy and situation modelling (the ability to visualise and imagine). They considered reading stories and listening to them as related kinds of thinking, with the latter reinforcing the former. They also firmly believed that story listening developed a sense of citizenship and community, with storytelling playing a crucial role by helping students understand cultural traits and acquire social skills.”

He goes on to say that they asked students from the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (known as Lab Schools) for their memories of being read to.  (Lab Schools were known for promoting a daily Storytime, originally orally, without books, until librarians took over in the 1930s).  And when asked, the students said “they remembered story time as the best thing in their early years of education, as being even better than playtime. They rarely described favourite tales or story details, which we had expected, and instead talked about how listening to stories made them feel. That feeling was so pleasurable they wanted to recreate it, motivating them to remember and play with language, helping them visualize, and driving them to replicate the experience by reading as many books as possible. They also attributed story listening experience as the main explanation for acquiring life-long attitudes and habits, such as a sense of closeness with others in the school and community, and a desire to know and understand other people and different viewpoints and explore other cultures.

Wikimedia Commons - Storytime

“Storytelling helped teachers of that period manage challenges that today’s educators would recognise, specifically diverse multi-lingual communities, disaffected or disruptive students, and a rapidly changing society. For teachers of that time it was self-evident that storytelling nurtured better teacher-student relations and established happy and productive classrooms. They were not alone in this. Social workers in settlement houses, play leaders in public parks, and, especially, children’s librarians all viewed storytelling as an essential part of childhood development. All recognised these primary reasons given at the time for widespread storytelling.”

So why has it been lost?

In the last several years of primary school teaching the emphasis seems to have been on learning more and more facts about more and more subjects, so that some of the more pleasurable parts of the timetable have been pushed out.  And even with regard to “Language” lessons, the natural home of Storytime, you would think, now far more stress is put on the totally unnecessary importance of learning such mystifying terms as “fronted adverbials”.  (This is simply putting an adverbial phrase before the verb, as in “After the rain stopped, Jane went out to play”, rather than “Jane went out to play after the rain stopped.”)  How vital is it that children know what this reversal is actually called?  Even if they become writers themselves I very much doubt if they will need to know the correct term for it.  Far more useful to extend their general reading in order to work out what sounds right and what doesn’t.  Surely the insistence on children having to learn such unnecessary terms is the best way to put them off reading and writing for life? 

Patrick Ryan (Books for Keeps)

Children have a right to be read to, both in school and out of it, and the loss of Storytime is a huge mistake.  Thank you, Patrick Ryan, for reminding everyone of that.  It would be good to hope that someone influential in what is taught in schools might read your book and, even better, act on it!

www.lynnebenton.com