A Level of Happiness Comes From The Joy of Reading and Writing.

I find today’s press reports on the UK Educational statistics distressingly disappointing news. A third of those leaving primary school have little or no real ability to read. The loss in the level of happiness, self-worth and self-esteem for those youngsters involved is appalling. For parents this is not only a worry, it should be a caution and a trigger for action. Illiteracy is almost entirely curable if, for example, synthetic phonics processes are used properly. This level of failure in literacy currently cannot be allowed to continue as we become so much more dependent on the Internet

Two competing but excellent systems are Phono Graphix and Jolly Phonics. Both can be researched on the Internet. They are not new and are well reviewed as well as used in many schools already. Well taught, they help all manner of children with reading difficulties.

In fact, I make a seemingly preposterous prediction in this age of legal “class actions” in the courts – where groups of people seemingly injured or affected by the same event join together to sue. I believe that in the foreseeable future class actions will also occur where those who left school illiterate will club together to sue schools or education authorities for negligence in not teaching them to read and write.

Their case will be, first, that schools had a duty of care to the children to use proven methods through trained teachers to teach reading and writing successfully. Second, they were in breach of that duty because they did not. And thirdly, loss was incurred by those disadvantaged in terms of their resulting inability to profit in worthwhile careers because they could not read or write..

Just because we automatically learn to walk and talk, it can be assumed by some that humans will automatically learn to read and write. We do not – that is, unless we are taught. And it also requires that we are taught by teachers who in turn have themselves been taught how to teach reading and writing.

The Evening Standard initiative on literacy is marvellous. But there is not a one size fits all solution here. Each child will, if unaided, try to develop its own strategy to learn to read and when it fails, it will drop out. An awareness among teachers and parents is vital to watch for signs. Making use of different approaches is key and the synthetic phonics systems mentioned above can be remarkably successful if the teachers involved have been properly trained

In this internet age, we should surely be vowing to ourselves that we rid ourselves of illiteracy as if it were an educational form of HIV.

Failure to do this will continue to wreak untold damage on the health and happiness of youngsters. Low self-worth and self-esteem will result inevitably but what can also happen is even more worrying. Failing to teach a child to read, (and there are more boys than girls at risk here), represents the best chance to shame that child in front of his or her peers - a group of young and impressionable individuals equally trying to find themselves.

The psychological damage can be enormous and insidious.

So ashamed can an illiterate child become that they adopt deceitful strategies to cover up their failure. They lie about it in ways that can so easily stretch to other aspects of their lives. They then carry these deceitful patterns into their adulthood.

The level of happiness to be obtained from reading and writing – and particularly in a creative form - is infinite. Sparing children the almost permanent sense of failure and low sense of self-worth must be a top priority.

Gerry Neale recommends those involved in teaching reading and writing or with children who have difficulties to read ‘Why Children Can’t Read: And What We Can Do About It’ by Diane McGuinness and Steven Pinker.

Gerry is the author of a recently published novel called “Squaring Circles” which explores a number of cognitive issues and is available through Amazon.co.uk or via the publishers at www.pearlpress.co.uk to find Squaring Circles in the Our Books section. More information is available at www.squaringcircles.co.uk.