“Reading holds the keys to so much of children’s education.”
Reading with children also helps cultivate good (reading) habits.
You might like to begin with this blog post from my friend at Kinderbookswitheverything - she alerted me to this article in the Financial Review.
Here are some quotes from the piece that resonated with me:
Nicki Duckett, the teacher who oversees reading at the school (Silverdale Primary Academy UK) ... has an ambition to marry the “skill” and the “will” to read. In the 20 years she has worked in education, she has observed how the proliferation of gaming and smartphones, a busy school day, plus extracurricular clubs and activities create “more demands on children’s time”.
“Without adult reading role models in homes, schools and wider society, it is likely children will find it harder to develop the reading habit.”
Immersion in new worlds, the delight in good writing and the discovery of information are goals in themselves. But the decline in reading has broader implications for employability, participation in democracy, and literacy, including critical thinking, particularly important in the age of digital misinformation.
Another study found “significant evidence that reading is linked to important developmental factors in children, improving their cognition, mental health, and brain structure, which are cornerstones for future learning and wellbeing”.
Tech is also a problem for parents, says Douglas. “They are not modelling great reading habits because they’re always on their phones. They are also more likely to put kids on a device. There is a decline in parents reading to children.”
Check out my recent post which explores many of these important issues.
This article also touches other issues such as giving readers choice to select the books they want to read; the availability of books in libraries and shops and classrooms; books for boys aged 11 and 12; and the pesky issue of celebrity authors (I call these Fairy Floss books).
The statistics in the Financial Review piece are from the UK. Here is a snap shot of the situation in Australia:
Anna Burkey Reading Australia - ABC News 14th July
"We're not just seeing people not reading for themselves … we're seeing people not reading to their children as much and that they are less likely to read to boys than to girls," she said.
Ms Burkey said she would like to see more dads reading to their children to set a positive example.
"Reading for pleasure as a child is one of the biggest indicators of future success as an adult, and spending time reading increases empathy, while helping us feel less anxious,"
"Reading brings down your blood pressure, it slows your heart rate, it calms you down and it allows focus and concentration in a world where our attention spans are getting ever more fragmented.
"Reading allows us to have more focus and concentration and, if you read regularly, you're more likely to sleep better at night."
"[Not reading] means that we don't see the patterns in things, we don't see the human behaviours that keep repeating in politics and public life because we're not doing the deep, slow thinking and books are vital to the deep, slow thinking."
to walk in other people's shoes," she said.
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