When my kids were really little, they all loved reading. Daughter 1 would often be found with her little torch under her duvet reading Horrid Henry and it was a similar picture for all the others. Reading was fun, spontaneous, on their terms: their choice of books, their time. Then came school and the dreaded reading record and slowly, but surely, their enthusiasm for reading dwindled. The reading record: a bigger passion killer than granny pants. I literally watched my kids’ love of the written word slide on a slippery, downward slope. Watching the crap that my otherwise creative and intelligent children were writing in these odious paperback booklets, made me want tear them up. The final straw came when I saw that daughter 1, the most avid reader of all of them, had written her latest entry, one letter per box, thus filling up almost an entire book with one analysis.
Just imagine, settling into bed with your favourite book in the evening. You are tired because it’s near the end of the day, but it’s a real page turner and you are desperate to find out what happens next. You are then taken to another cliff hanger, which you decide to leave for the following night. You close your book, feeling contented and excited at the same time…and then you have to write about it. You are supposed to be analysing character and plot, use of language and why the author chose to write it in a particular way…but you simply can’t be bothered. So you just scribble down what happened, because it fills the box that you have to fill and your teacher will be happy – not ecstatically so, but appeased. You have to do this night after night for years. You are given targets to reach and deadlines to follow and now all those wonderful page turning books have become burden after burden.
The reading record mimics the lot of the teachers who have to mark them. Teaching is fun, exhilarating and challenging, but once it has to be shoved into boxes and analysed to death – literally – it becomes a chore and a burden. Education needs to find liberation: from the reading record to the mountains of pointless paperwork teachers are required to complete. Only then will children be able to grow into free thinkers, taught by teachers who are free to teach.
My kids all hated the reading records as well – but then they also hated reading!! I envy you having bookworms in your house because mine were always dragged kicking and screaming to the bookshelf! I absolutely agree about the constraints in teaching and worry that we are simply teaching children to jump through assessment hoops rather than truly educating them and we don’t know what th implications of that will be. Great post. #ablogginggoodtime
Thanks so much for your comments. The only thing number 2 daughter reads now are my blogs! The others are reading less as they get older, which is a shame. It is so stressful when kids are reluctant readers. Good to link up.
As a teacher I completely agree. I was lucky being a drama teacher that I was able to be a bit freer with what I asked of children and actually asked them to keep a journal throughout the year that they could write, draw, collage, moodboard in. I found this worked really well as it appealed to the different sides of different children.
Thanks for linking to #ablogginggoodtime
I think that is the key: give teachers more freedom. They know best. Thank you for commenting.