Metaphor, Imagery… But Where’s the Story? Asks Griselda Heppel.
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 lure of computer games. Photo by Boris Hamer: https://www.pexels.com/photo /young-child-engaged-with-laptop-indoors- 29545224 / 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 liter...