Thoughts on reading

To quote Dr Seuss:

I love this quote.

This challenge of trying to engage young people in reading is not new to me. I have spent a lot of time over the years trying to find ways to encourage my students to read, but sadly many teenagers instantly associate the idea with “work” rather than “pleasure” and will resist it. In every secondary school I have worked at, there has been a compulsory “library lesson” once every fortnight. During this lesson, students are simply expected to sit and read in silence for 60 minutes and had the choice of any books in the whole library. For a very small minority, this was a pleasure. Yet, for the vast majority, it was absolute torture. Many students dreaded this lesson above all others. Countless times, I witnessed students with the book open in front of them, simply staring into space rather than reading it. Many seemed to have developed a “mental block” against reading.

There is no getting away from it though: children who read generally perform better in ALL SUBJECTS, NOT JUST ENGLISH. There are no short cuts.

To conclude, the visual below is food for thought.  I think it clearly reinforces the idea that reading alone is an education. It is “enough” (yes, there’s that word again!)