Metaphor, Imagery… But Where’s the Story? Asks Griselda Heppel.

The lure of computer games. Photo by Boris Hamer: https://www.pexels.com/photo /young-child-engaged-with-laptop-indoors- 29545224/

Recently a headline in the Spectator caught my eye: The Real Reason Children no Longer Enjoy Reading by Mary Wakefield. Given that Received Opinion blames the lure of the mobile phone, computer games, social media etc for the sad decline in young people picking up books, I was intrigued.The article title implied something else was afoot. And indeed, according to Wakefield, it is.

The author describes a train journey whiled away (if you can call it that) by coaching her son for his 11 plus exam. The boy’s increasingly stubborn refusal to answer a simple question about an image in an English comprehension paper drives her dotty, until she realises there’s something else going on here. It’s not that her son can’t understand. He’s fighting back. Against a curriculum that has airily dispensed with any need to introduce children to the delights of literature, in favour of regimenting them to give the same answers to an endless supply of excerpts. Show you recognise a grammatical construction. Point out a metaphor. Give an example of alliteration. Boom, you’re through. As for reading the whole book/play/ poem the excerpt comes from, that no longer happens, according to Wakefield. Hard-pressed teachers teach only to the test.

If

Journey to the River Sea
by Eva Ibbotson

ever I heard of an argument for not doing the 11 plus, this is it. Or is this the general rule in all the upper years of primary school, that children are never given a whole book to read – Eva Ibbotson’s magical Journey to the River Sea, say– but only bits of it, from which they can’t get a sense of how the whole fits together, or even of what it is to lose yourself in a story? I hope not. Certainly Wakefield’s wild fear that this never ends, that at senior school the excerpts regime continues inexorably, is belied by the GCSE English literature syllabus, which stipulates the study of one Shakespeare play, one 19th century novel, one modern text and some poetry. Excerpts for comprehension belong in the English Language GCSE, and ‘twas ever thus. 

However, unless the joy of reading whole texts begins early, how will young people build up the stamina to tackle the more demanding GCSE works? 

It sounds as if Wakefield’s son’s school has got the balance wrong, leaving it to the child and their parents to do the reading for pleasure bit (which clearly happens in Wakefield’s home, with White Fang and The Wind in the Willows). If so, never mind the pressure of assessments, the school isn’t doing its job properly. 

Not a heroic play.
Death of a Salesman
By Arthur Miller

Funnily enough, when my son was at this stage, it wasn’t the lack of full texts, but the ones the ambitious teachers chose that bothered me. The senior schools’ entrance paper merely required the theme of The Hero, for which any classic children’s book, you’d think, would provide good material. 

In which bracket I do not include Death of a Salesman. The only truly heroic character in that depressing play is Linda, who I’m pretty sure the teacher did not have in mind. (Feel free to tackle me on this: a possible subject for a future blogpost!) 

Perhaps he should also have checked the GCSE syllabus. My son ended up studying Willy Loman’s misery for 4 years. He did not choose English A level. 

Mary Wakefield might consider her son has had a lucky escape.