The Power of Reading

Our Director, Alex, was honoured to introduce Doug Lemov at the  Midlands Knowledge Hub event at Lichfield Cathedral. The day was focused on the Science of Reading ‘Post Phonics’ and was an inspiring and thought provoking day for all.  

Alex was asked to speak about the ‘Power of Reading’. Below is an extended version of her speech. 

The Power of Reading 

Reading is one of humanity’s greatest, and most controversial, creations. 

Our ability to translate the spoken word in symbols to record and share knowledge has been instrumental in human progress. From ancient scrolls to digital screens, the invention of the written word has enabled us to organise our societies, ignited our imaginations, allowed us to converse with great minds, challenge the way we think and helped us to envision the future. Reading has been, and continues to be, one of our greatest tools for transformation.  

Not only that, but through the pages of a book, we experience the struggles, joys and triumphs of people from different cultures, time periods, and all walks of life, which enables us to form a deeper connection to humanity by exposing us to what unites us. Our shared connection. What it means to be human. Books remind us that we are never truly alone.  

Introducing our children to the wonders of the written word is the most extraordinary gift that we pass on to the next generation.  

But as I said at the start, reading is one of our greatest, and most controversial, creations.  

It is true to state that since our earliest exposure to written text, reading has been considered hugely important. Egyptian hieroglyphics were believed to possess special powers. Many religions place a significant status on the reading of sacred texts. Many of our ancestors have seen reading, as we might today, as important for sharing knowledge, for self-improvement and importantly, for enjoyment.   

However, humans have had a love/hate relationship with reading from the start. The power of reading, and the power possessed by those who read, has not always been seen as a power for good.  

Controversies surrounding reading have existed ever since people began reading. Both Plato and Socrates warned against the spread of literacy. One reason for their concerns was that reading would remove a person’s responsibility to remember. Philosophers were also concerned that unlike oral presentations, where messages could be confined to those admitted to the audience, the distant reader could not be contained. Their reactions, their understanding of the message, and the meaning they make could not be known, explored or scrutinised by the person disseminating the words into the world. Across time and place, there has been a fear that the written word being allowed to freely roam about everywhere uncensored is a threat to society(1).  

It seems each generation has complained about the amount of information out there available for mass consumption. This claim, that there is too much information or knowledge out there, not only predates the invention of the internet, but also the printing press. From Roman poets worrying about ‘information overload’, to fourteenth century concerns over there being ‘too many scribes’, to later Renaissance philosophers protesting about ‘swarms of books’ being brought into the world(2). The power of reading, as a source of destruction, as a threat to civilised society, as ‘moral poison’, has existed since our spoken words first found themselves on the pages of our books. The Athenian dramatist, Menander, even warned that those who teach women to read and write were ‘feeding a vile snake on more poison’!(3) Many of the concerns we now hold regarding digital technology were echoed in relation to books centuries ago. 

Just as the printing revolution and education aimed to democratise reading, oppressive regimes across the globe have sought to maintain their grip on populations through denying access to books. In Berlin in 1933, books were burned across the country. As the words of these intellectuals were lost to ashes, soldiers celebrated their attack on knowledge. And this was not the first, nor last time that the written word would be under attack in this way in the 20th century.  

In 1981, the Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka was under attack from two hundred disgruntled policemen – as the building burned, so too did its entire collection of 100,000 books and 10,000 manuscripts. In 1992, shells rained down on a building in Bosnia’s capital city. These shells were designed to cause fire rapidly on impact and they were fired at the library(4).  

The history of book burning, which is certainly not unique to the 20th century, highlights the power of the written word. An attack on books is a deliberate act to destroy the aspirations of the future, to sever the cultural bonds that unite us, and to yield control over the minds of a population by restricting what they have access to read.  

But we don’t have to burn books, or even censor them, to limit their power. If the desire to read is extinguished in the next generation, then our books become powerless. Many would argue that our culture of reading today is facing serious challenges, just as it has done, but in different ways, in the past. One reason for this, according to some, is the influence of the internet and technology. The other, perhaps linked to this, is the demise of a culture of reading, with those who enjoy reading being regarded ‘cultural dinosaurs’(5). Why read a book when you can watch people dancing on Tik Tok?  

So, in today’s society, is the reader an endangered species that we need to protect? In modern Britain, with all the world’s information just a click away, are we in fact becoming more and more starved of the experience and meaning that comes from holding a real book, turning the pages, breathing in the smell of the paper? Are we witnessing the death, or at least decline, of reading as we once knew it? I certainly hope not.  

While we are relatively powerless in limiting the influence of the large technology industries on our children, our schools can be sanctuaries of knowledge. Those smart phones have no place in our classrooms. It is in our schools that we can address our national culture of reading. We should strive to go beyond simply ‘reading for pleasure’, but endeavour to revitalise the ethos held by many of our ancestors, that reading is powerful and should be valued in its own right.  

And reading well should be the right of every child.  

Research conducted by GL assessment in 2020 showed that 25% of students at 15 have a reading age of 12 or below(6). That is at least 1 in 4 children who are unlikely to have the reading age required to access their GCSEs. Not being able to read well impacts every aspect of school life, and this research showed that weaker readers struggled just as much in maths and science in GCSE as they did in English.  

So, our first job in schools is to make sure all children can read well. We can’t leave 1 in 4 behind.  

How we teach children to read, like reading itself, is often misunderstood, controversial and highly politicised. For some, explicitly teaching children how the spoken sounds are represented in written form (phonics) has been seen as an oppressive and tyrannical agenda. When in fact, this knowledge is needed to decode words, and explicit instruction of this is the best way to ensure that all children have the freedom that comes with reading any text. 

However, reading is clearly about more than simply decoding words. If we aspire for our children to read well, then they need to make meaning from what they read, and to be able to do this, they need to be able to understand the words and context of what they are reading. Reading comprehension is not a skill that can be applied in all contexts(7). In order to understand what we read, we need to understand the vocabulary being used, and have sufficient background knowledge of the subject matter. Unfortunately, in our ‘information age’, where we have access to more knowledge than ever before, we too often fail to place any value on it.  

But to uphold a strong culture of reading, not only do we need to ensure all our children can read well, but we also need to place importance on what they read. And just like everything else to do with reading, this is also controversial. Interestingly, historians studying the French Revolution have placed a significant focus on what the people in France were reading prior to the French Revolution. This shows us that not only is reading is powerful, but perhaps some books wield more power than others.  

Our literary tastes form part of our cultural identity, which is intertwined with both our working lives, and our sense of who we are.  Some have claimed that we should fight against a notion of a traditional canon when we plan our reading curriculum. They have argued that we should take the ‘classics’ off the curriculum, remove any texts that don’t mirror our modern moral ideals, and bin any books that are seen as no longer relevant to our children today. In our schools, we faced a backlash from people who were outraged that we teach Shakespeare. 

While I stand behind our decision to teach Shakespeare, I acknowledged that we must always be self-aware when we are making those important decisions around what children will read in our schools, as so much of ourselves will impact what we choose to teach and what we leave out. The choices we make through our curriculum need careful consideration. We have a great responsibility when we curate our curriculum. We need to prioritise rich, diverse, thought-provoking and challenging books. I believe it should be a child’s intellectual inheritance to critically engage with a historically established canon, as well as having access to more modern and diverse texts that offer children a variety of interesting perspectives on the world.  

We must remember that the books we choose to share with children expand the world they inhabit – opening them up to new possibilities, opportunities and ideas. Everything we read adds a new dimension to our understanding of the world. Therefore, our curriculum isn’t just a document, it’s an act of social justice.  

As teachers, we need to remember that what we read has power and feed all our children a rich and diverse diet through our curriculum. I have no doubt that Doug’s messages today will empowers us all to think more deeply about how we can better support our children to read well. Reading has been, and continues to be, one of our greatest tools for transformation. 

 

1 Furedi, F. (2015) ‘Power of Reading’, Bloomsbury 

2 Eisenstein, E.L. (1979) ‘The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe’, Cambridge University Press  

3 Lyons, M. (2010) ‘The History of Reading and Writing’, Palgrave Macmillan 

4 Ovenden, R. (2021) ‘Burning the Books: A history of knowledge under attack’, John Murray  

5 Furedi, F. (2015) ‘Power of Reading’, Bloomsbury  

6 GL Assessment, (2020) ‘Read all about it’  

7 Such, C. (2021) ‘The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading’, Corwin