Saturday 16 July 2011

The ‘private worlds of independent reading’

Allie, who comments here fairly regularly, used the above phrase during a recent discussion on the desirability or not of getting children to read earlier rather than later. I found this very interesting. Much of the debate among home educators when it comes to reading, seems to centre around the academic advantages or not of reading at the same age as children generally do at school. I remember the owner of one of the major home educating lists remarking that he could not think why a child of seven would ‘need’ to be able to read. Alan Thomas evidently has the same attitude, talking in his books of the way that reading is necessary in schools to engage with the primary curriculum, but that this is not needed at home. He goes on to say, using a particularly ghastly piece of jargon:

Children may not perceive a need to read if they are busy with other things and have adults or children around who are willing to fulfil their literacy needs’

I have not the remotest idea what is meant by fulfilling ‘literacy needs’, unless he means people reading to a child. The very use of the expression ’literacy needs’ makes the thing sound like something tiresome which can be done of somebody else’s behalf to save them the trouble.

The fact of the matter is that listening to somebody read a story is a completely different experience from being immersed in a book yourself. One only has to watch a child who is deep in a book and then compare him with a child having a story read to him to see the difference. And both are vastly different from watching television or going to the cinema. These are not slightly altered versions of the same thing; they are completely different activities. The main reason that I got my daughter to read as early as possible was not so that she could engage with a primary curriculum! It was so that she could share in what is to me the greatest pleasure in my life. Reading is for me not a means to an end, although it is of course a very useful skill if you wish to get on in life. It is an end in itself; an activity, pastime or passion for which there is simply no substitute. I love the film of Gone With the Wind, but watching it is altogether separate from reading the book.

There is also a great difference between mechanical reading of the kind that we use when looking at the instructions on a can of soup and the sustained reading that we use when losing ourselves in a novel. It is rather like those three dimensional pictures which were popular a few years ago, which initially look like a random collection of dots. If you stare in the right way, they resolve themselves into solid images. This is what true reading is like. One stares at the page of little black squiggles and after a while they too resolve themselves into images and pictures. This experience is for me, far more gripping than gawping at the television or listening to somebody reading a story on the wireless. It was this that I wished my daughters to share and it was for this that I wished reading to become second nature to them from a very early age.

Talking of somebody fulfilling ‘literacy needs’ is so completely beside the point, that it makes me wonder whether or not people like Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison are even thinking about the same thing as me when they write about children reading!

9 comments:

  1. Oops, I agree with you two days running. Watch out, Simon, you're losing your touch!

    The only thing I'd say is that absorbing information via radio, TV or book tape is easier in some ways than reading because you don't have to use your imagination to the same degree. I'm sure I can't be the only person who's watched an adaptation of a much-loved book and found that the characters don't look or act as I thought they should. On going back to the book, I've sometimes noticed that there were alternative interpretations that I hadn't seen before.

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  2. "I have not the remotest idea what is meant by fulfilling ‘literacy needs’, unless he means people reading to a child."

    Basically this - a child sees words and wants to know what they say. If there's always someone to read the words then they don't see a need to do it themselves.

    My son was in this zone at age six, when he started playing a video game that had text instructions in it. He'd ask me to read the words to him and to start with, I obliged. Then I introduced delays, "wait a couple of minutes while I finish this" before going to help. That little bit of inconvenience, introduced any time he wanted something read when one of us wasn't already with him, seemed to be what it took to make him learn.

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  3. What's David's son has experienced, parents who met his need for knowledge by reading to him in a purposeful situation is rare. Well certainly on the scale of reading the instructions on a video game. This can go on for months. It is a wonderful interaction and a real spur to learn functional reading skills. It's different to reading a book, as it's not just about story or information but a combination of following a story, one you are involved in creating, following directions, seeking information and acting on it.

    I'm not saying it's better it's just different, it brings a different function to reading. There are so many reasons to read but two reasons that are unnecessary are

    1. To please one's parents and teachers by showing "progress".
    2. To simply learn the skill of reading.

    Reading to please others or to show progress takes away the real joy and purpose of reading.

    There is no reason to learn the skill when all the other reasons to read will result in your picking up the skill anyway.

    (if anyone want's to make the dyslexia argument here, go ahead.. I think this still fits children with dyslexia want to learn to read, parents may need to add and offer extra tools to help them do that but there is still no need to do it in a way that's not child led)

    Children who learn that way develop fluent reading when they've never been "taught" to read, they've learned it themselves because they wanted to. The parent has contributed, probably as much as a parent who has taught the child to read but in a different way.

    The step towards the wonder, that Simon talks about, of reading privately happens easily when the child desires that experience. In our house the child had gained fluent reading through reading video games, so the first time he read a whole book aloud he did it with intonation, fluency, full understanding and drama. It was a Dr Seuss book, a new one that he'd not had read to him.

    Dr Seuss is a wonderful reading "programme" as well as great philosophy course.

    I can only guess whether the same fluency and drama was there when he read a couple of chapters to himself for the first time. It was The Butterfly Lion by Micheal Murporgo, I was tired and not reading well enough so he carried on alone 'till he too fell asleep.

    He's never been pushed to read easy books just because they are at this level of ability, (apart from the few weeks he was at school). We've read to him the books he's wanted to experience, now he can read to himself he is able to read books he really wants to read. I happen to think that this is a wonderful gift. It certainly was a wonderful gift for me to see some of the impact the book had on him. The meaning of a book can impact more directly when it's not filtered though a reader.

    I agree with you Simon but such joy can be achieved by supporting autonomous learning.

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  4. "There is also a great difference between mechanical reading of the kind that we use when looking at the instructions on a can of soup and the sustained reading that we use when losing ourselves in a novel."

    Of course, and my love of reading was one of the reasons for choosing an autonomous approach. I had seen the affect that forcing a reluctant reader to learn before they were ready in my brothers, neither of whom read for pleasure. All of my children, both early and late readers, read for pleasure (though not necessarily fiction). Obviously this is all anecdotal and the two elements - reluctant learning and reading for pleasure, may be unconnected. We are teaching reading earlier and earlier in our schools and fewer people than ever appear to read for pleasure. Maybe there's a connection? I remember reading research that found a correlation between reluctant and keen reading learners in school and later reading for pleasure, but obviously we don't know if their pleasure in reading would have increased if they had been able to learn to read when they chose.

    Reading for pleasure is like any other hobby. Not everyone is going to enjoy it, and others 'find' it at different ages. We are all different.

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  5. Are there some books that you start to read and do not get on with to the extent that you don't bother reading past the first chapter? I know I have and I always have novel on the go, I feel lost without one. This is how I imagine it is for those who don't like fiction - but for all fiction, just not particular books. If reading novels gives nothing to reader, is this wrong or does it prove some fault in the reader or their upbringing? Or are they just different to those who enjoy fiction and gain similar pleasures in different ways? For instance, I know someone who hates fiction but loves biographies and another who loves natural history and that's all they read at the moment?

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  6. Simon said, 'Reading is for me not a means to an end, although it is of course a very useful skill if you wish to get on in life. It is an end in itself; an activity, pastime or passion for which there is simply no substitute.'

    Anon said,' If reading novels gives nothing to reader, is this wrong or does it prove some fault in the reader or their upbringing? Or are they just different to those who enjoy fiction and gain similar pleasures in different ways?'

    I don't think that Simon is talking solely about reading novels is he? He's talking about reading in general.

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  7. I think there's something in Allie's use of the word 'private'.

    It reminds me a bit of Charlotte Mason's philosophy of encouraging children to have their own 'relationship' with the world (literature, music, art, the beauty of the natural world etc) without the mediator of a teacher or parent being in the way.

    Thanks for making me think about this subject.

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  8. "I don't think that Simon is talking solely about reading novels is he? He's talking about reading in general."

    I was addressing this comment:

    'There is also a great difference between mechanical reading of the kind that we use when looking at the instructions on a can of soup and the sustained reading that we use when losing ourselves in a novel.'

    I agree with you though. Those I know who don't enjoy novels still gain much from the reading they do above and beyond soup cans.

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  9. Yes, there's plenty of sustained reading involved in reading poetry, philosophy, biography etc.

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