Last week was World Book Day… or as I like to call it ‘every day’. However, I am not feeling the love from the place which should be embracing books- the classroom. I should say from the off-set that this is not an attack on teachers. Teachers are- on the most part- inspirational and incredible people who are currently working in, I believe, some of the toughest times and most stressful time for education. Books, I think, used to be more celebrated in schools. Primary schools, at least from what I've heard from my 7-year-old niece, are still able to do that. I still have memories of reading time, the cosy corners and bookshelves. Remember the Scholastic book fairs at primary school? We lived for those fairs! I attended a rather idyllic village primary school and the build up to those fairs was something else. Maybe I’m seeing it from a bookworm's point of view but the excitement did seem to flow through everyone in the class. We’d watch those huge crates be wheeled in to the main hall. The day before, we were allowed an afternoon of scanning the books. It was such a joyous occasion, clocking books we were going to beg our parents for when they went on sale the next morning… Now of course we can’t blame schools solely for the loss of interest in books and young people. Books are competing with phones and all that they have to offer. However, the further students go through the school system, the less reading is pushed for pleasure. In fact, it seems it is used more as a punishment. Books aren’t enjoyed in schools anymore. They are used as a tool. I enjoy a book discussion and debate as much as the next bookworm, but these books are torn apart so much that they barely resemble a story anymore. In fact, the whole story is not explored at all. In 2020, the CCEA announced that 'novel study' was no longer required. Meaning a student wanting to study in English Literature could, technically, do so without having actually read a complete book. Since becoming a writer myself, I can confidently say that John Steinbeck absolutely did not think as much about the symbolism of the weather in the opening chapter of Of Mice and Men as GCSE students do. That said, ‘back in my day’, we at least read the entirety of Of Mice and Men... and I loved it. It still holds a special place in my literary heart- I even had a cuddly lucky rabbit for my exams named Lennie [I probably took it a little too far with the book appreciation...] and it opened the door to other novels which I wouldn't have necessarily discovered myself. Now students read extracts. This angers me so much. This is not teaching students to read for pleasure- but as a necessity to pass exams. Imagine reading A Christmas Carol and not getting the character development and true message of the story. Instead, they study the same passage over and over and are told what to think and say. It’s soul destroying. Now I adore poetry but at school I loathed it. English was my favourite subject but if it was a poetry lesson [and this was all the way through my school life] my heart would sink. Not because the poems we were studying were necessarily bad or boring, but because the work we were expected to do was so mind-numbingly dull. Once again, this isn’t blaming the teachers at all- I had some wonderful English teachers- but they had a tick list to follow. I feel sorry for teachers who are having to spoon feed young people with answers copied from a textbook. ‘Answer it this way and you will get such-and-such grade.’ It becomes almost like a Maths problem to solve. Now the powers that be are telling young people how to feel about a poem, when it should be such a personal experience. It isn't why I fell in love with the power of words. I am grateful that I found poetry by myself, but many I fear will not have that pleasure. Teachers are under insane pressure these days. There is very little room for creativity. It used to be that if students responded positively to a certain aspect, you could go off script and embrace it. Now to venture off the lesson plan seems like a failure… even if the students don’t get as much from the lesson. Back to that tick list. Even Creative Writing has become a tick list. I loathed working in schools and having to tell a child they had got a sentence ‘wrong’ because it didn’t fit the criteria that the examiners would be looking for… it was one of the main reasons I set up an extra-curricular Creative Writing Club. It was a safe space where students could just write. No right or wrong. No fronted adverbials required unless they naturally came about…writing needs more freedom in order for students to fall in love with it, rather than resent it. I worry about the future of reading and writing. Young people need to discover the pleasure of a story- sadly, at the moment, there appears to be no room for creativity, joy or imagination in schools.
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