Teachers are finding it harder to keep children interested in books. Photo: Xavier Arnau.
I’ve never paid much attention to Book Week. I just thought of it as another of the plethora of worthy causes that have a day or a week of celebration allotted to them for no other reason than it seems a good thing to do.
I do know that some take Book Week very seriously, dressing themselves and family members as their favourite book character. These people can talk endlessly about the books that influenced them growing up. Many are members of book clubs.
This year, though, I am thinking about it. Not joining a book club for reasons I’ll explain later, but I’m thinking about Book Week because I fear the beautiful pastime is slowly withering away.
I love reading. I have done so all my life. When I was younger, I read all the Famous Fives, Secret Sevens, The Investigators, The Magic Faraway Tree, etc, etc. When I got older, it was Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, All Quiet on the Western Front, Animal Farm, 1984 and so on.
(By the way, many of these books would struggle to get past our culture cancelers these days. Some of them have already been altered to protect the sensitive. Poor old Roald Dahl has gone through a real working over!)
These days I set myself a target of reading at least one book a month. It doesn’t sound like much, but time always seems to be against me. I only read non-fiction, which makes me pretty boring I guess, but I love learning about history and the people who have made it. And this is why I’ve never joined a book club.
My love of books even extends to writing them. Neither was very successful, but hey, I’m officially an author.
But back to my original claim that reading is going the same way as the Tasmanian Tiger. Speaking to a group of teachers recently, they told me how challenging it is to get their students to read. They are told reading is boring and uncool. People who read are squares and have no friends.
Out of desperation, the teachers set aside entire lessons and ask the students to read. Sometimes they even give the students the opportunity to read the book of their choice.
They noticed that nearly every student was fidgeting and distracted after just a few minutes. Barely anyone was actually reading. The whole lesson, one teacher told me, was a pointless exercise.
“Are the books boring?” I asked. No, not at all. Some of them can be a bit pretentious, but they are chosen because they have appealed to younger generations in the past. And anyway, this doesn’t explain why students can’t even concentrate when they are given the opportunity to choose their own book.
The simple answer would be to blame it all on mobile phones. Regular readers will know that is my default position whenever there is anything in society I want to rant about. I’m sure this is part of the problem – people are stressing they are missing something on their social media feeds.
So all power to Book Week, and long may it continue. And if someone much wiser than myself can work out a way to turn younger generations into bookworms, please step forward!
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