Celebrating Reading for Enjoyment – Findings from our Annual Literacy Survey 2016

Michael Morpurgo, speaking at the inaugural Book Trust Annual Lecture

The concern I have about giving this talk – supportive as I am hugely of the aims of this Book Trust “Time to Read” campaign – is that I know, and you know, that I am talking to the essentially like-minded.

We may differ, but even then perhaps only minimally, as to how we achieve what we are all hoping for, seeking and working for: a culture in which to love and cherish books is common to everyone, a society in which we all feel that literature is universally valued and respected, belongs to us all, helps us to grow intellectually and emotionally, helps unite us; a society where homes and schools encourage children to grow up listening to and reading stories, where local libraries are open and free at the point of delivery.

We know, without reminding ourselves endlessly, 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, provoked and challenged, to spur confidence and creativity.

Like many wordsmiths and storymakers, I speak of all this often, rather too often, I fear, at conferences here and there, at literary festivals, at gatherings of like-minded folk, as I am doing this evening.

Our hope, of course, when we do this is that we provoke debate, and that this debate will help to change attitudes, and ultimately contribute to the enriching of children’s lives, and life-chances, through a love of stories. That’s my hope. That’s why I’m here. I think it is why we are all here.

But is this a vain hope? What are we doing this for? What is the point? Who will be listening, except ourselves?

I, like you, can sing the old song, blow the trumpet, bang the drum, for the love of books, the importance of literacy for our children, proclaim it loud. I can bemoan the closing of libraries; the homes where parents don’t read to their children; the schools where stories and poems can still so often be used simply as fodder for teaching literacy to the test.

I could blame successive governments who have all indulged in short-termism in their education policies, to a greater or lesser extent, who corral schools and pressure teachers into teaching literacy fearfully, who insist that measurable outcomes and results are the be-all and end-all of the education process, who often make a chore and a trial out of reading and books, who have succeeded so often only in banishing enjoyment.

But that would be passing the buck. We live in a democracy – just, an imperfect democracy certainly. Indeed, books and literature have played a crucial role over the centuries in creating and preserving our democratic system as well as the freedoms and rights we now so often take for granted; the freedom to speak our mind, to write and read what we will, and our freedom to choose.

We choose our governments. We are all of us in some way responsible both for the successes and failures of our literacy and our society, for they are, as we know, intimately connected. So when it comes to reading and books, if we have failed to engage and enthuse generations of children, especially those millions from less advantageous backgrounds – and most certainly we have failed far too many of them – then for all of us, even here amongst so many who have striven to create a more literate society, it is mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Indeed, I think it could be said that literacy, or the lack of it, helps divide us, helps define and separate those who have from those who have not; those who feel they belong and those who feel they do not, who feel alienated.

The truth is that over the years, indeed over the centuries, reading and literacy amongst our children, in our society, has certainly grown, but sadly it is also true it has not been all-inclusive, as it should have been, far from it. And that has been the great failure on our part.

in full via Read Michael Morpurgo’s beautiful paean to reading, books and the power of education | News.