At the weekend I attended a conference of the Scattered Authors Society (SAS), which I recently joined on the recommendation of Jo Kenrick. Most of the members seem to have a dozen or more books under their belts, so it was initially as nerve-wracking as much as anything… I made nervous small talk at first and felt like an imposter, but they were all too friendly even for an introvert like me to keep that up for very long.
Anyway, the discussion of the day was fascinating: the role of writer visits to schools. A terrifying picture of modern education emerged over the course of the day. No time for children to read books in class; no time for the teacher to read them; grammar and spelling taught in isolation with no real grounding in creativity); teachers forced to ‘steal time’ to read to their classes; a teacher quoted as saying he read to a class twice a week because ‘I think I can get away with that’. The idea of reading reduced to a guerrilla activity forced to take place in secret, away from the watchful eyes of the National Curriculum, has more than a hint of the Taliban about it.
At the same time, the same National Curriculum encourages the visiting of schools by authors, to meet the kids and instruct and inspire them. In other words, while giving with one hand they are throttling with the other. Visits, yes, fine, great; but are things then going to return to the old soul-destroying ways, as soon as the author is gone? Probably.
For myself, I learning to write and spell and use punctuation not from grammar lessons, which I loathed and continue to loathe. I learned the technical aspects by sheer habit of reading. If you read enough books, you know how commas and semicolons and whatnot work. You just do. In the same way that anyone who loves listening to music can usually carry a tune. Some people even learn instruments to virtuoso level just by listening to other players. The same is true of writing. As babies we learn to talk purely by listening and copying. Why can the same not be true of writing and good grammar?
Let our kids be taught not by lessons but by love. Love of books and reading. If children can’t see what the tools are for, why should they be bothered to try and master them? I’m not saying every child should be trained to be a novelist (we’d be out of a job); but everyone deserves to be allowed to listen to the music.
5 comments:
As a teacher who no longer works in a state school (or England for that matter) I totally agree with you. One of the nicest things about the kids I work with is that they love to read and they LISTEN when I read them a story.
Quite right. I think that stories are so ingrained in human culture – all human culture - that to decide not to use them as a teaching tool is a fantastic error of judgement. As Le Guin said, there have been great civilisations that got by without the wheel, but there have been no civilisations that did not tell stories.
For dyslexic children, being read to is the greatest gift.
Quite right. I met one author, Echo Freer, who is dyslexic and apparently fared abysmally at school. She eventually had to find her own way to overcome this obstacle and become a published author after more than two decades of trying.
Oh dear, I do say "Quite right" an awful lot, don't I? Damn.
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