‘Reading for Pleasure’
I am delighted that the term ‘reading for pleasure’ has come to such prominence in primary education. It can, however, mislead certain people who seem to equate it with reading as a leisure activity, an entertainment only. As such they consider it something aside from the serious content of education - an optional extra, even a mere time filler. This way of thinking leads on to an argument that reading books aloud to children is also essentially an indulgence; in a crowded curriculum, it must give way to other far more purposeful uses of teachers’ and children’s time. How wrong can anyone be?
Reading for enjoyment
Of course, enjoyment plays a very big part in reading for pleasure, reading beyond the purely functional. Why would children read any more than they have to if they don’t enjoy it, if they don’t get something out of it?
If children aren’t reading for pleasure, then, very importantly, the first thing is to make sure that they can read. However, if children can read but don’t, then we have to do everything we can to encourage them to become readers in the fullest sense. Best of all is if we we can establish a love of stories and books from the earliest stages, even before they can read completely independently, so that children grow up enjoying reading. But that doesn’t always happen and, even when it does, reading for pleasure sometimes drops off.
Yet the wonderful palace that is reading for pleasure has many doors. Its doors are books and every book enjoyed is a potential way in. It has been said, and I largely agree, that: there are no children who don’t enjoy reading, only children who haven’t found the right book yet. The positivity of this message is certainly something teachers should keep in mind. If we are to encourage children to read for pleasure then we must help them find the books and stories that they will enjoy - and that may well be different for different children.
Naturally, we canon compel children to enjoy anything, nor, indeed, should we if we could. But we can entice them. Having lots of lovely books around in classrooms and libraries is a vital start. But books on shelves, or even on display, are often not enough in themselves to attract a reluctant reader. Even recommendation and encouragement are not always sufficient. And if children will not explore, how will they ever find the ‘right book’? Well, we can open lots of possibilities by reading aloud to them. If we can show them books and stories are enjoyable, then we might just open one of those doors for them. And if the books we read to them are well chosen and enthusiastically shared, if they cover a wide enough range, then there is a very good chance that at some point one or more of them will open that door.
Reading to improve reading; reading to learn
It is perfectly possible to justify reading for pleasure on purely educational grounds.
Once children have reached a basic level of functionality in reading, there is only one way that they continue to improve and that is by reading. The more they read, the more they improve. Simple but true. Talking with others about what they read can help too, but most of the learning comes directly from reading itself. The very act of reading cumulatively builds the brain capacity to read even better. Vocabulary and comprehension improve. Awareness of ‘book language’, styles and forms improves, as does appreciation of the author’s intent. There is also very considerable knock-on to writing ability. (When asked how to improve as a writer, many a famous author has replied: ‘Read more,’). Improved reading also opens access to so much other learning across the curriculum and reading itself brings about huge areas of incidental learning. However, to fully benefit in all these ways, reading needs to be wide-ranging and extensive. The functional reading required by children in school is not enough. Even reading in a class group, or taking a ‘reading book’ home, though valuable, is not in itself enough. Children need to read voluntarily beyond what is ‘required’ of them. They need to read for pleasure.
Alongside actually teaching them how to perform the function of reading, encouraging reading for pleasure is probably the most important thing we can do to support children’s overall learning as well as their capacity to learn into the future.
Reading for respite and recovery
However there is far more to education than just covering a formal curriculum and achieving academic success. Likewise, there is far more to reading for pleasure than just supporting school attainment.
Once children are into reading for pleasure, it can offer valuable respite and recovery time from difficult situations and issues in their lives. Sometimes to escape for a while into a book helps them to cope with stress. And yes, many children do experience stress at various times from home or school. There does not even have to be anything ‘wrong’ with either environment. Just growing up can be a stressful and sometimes worrying business. Getting lost in a book can even just help to break up the routine and repetitiveness of daily life. Balanced with more active recreation, a reading habit has the potential to contribute significantly to children’s well-being. By encouraging it we offer them an important potential coping strategy.
Reading for Personal Growth
Through reading widely, children can grow by experiencing situations and places that they might well not have experienced for real, or indeed may never have the opportunity to experience directly. In many instances this vicarious experience may be second best, but it is far better than no experience at all. In other circumstances, for example living through a war, immersion in story may be a far safer and more desirable way of achieving important understanding than actually going through it.
Children love to recognise themselves, or others very like themselves, in books. It provides considerable reassurance and builds self-esteem, for all children, but perhaps especially for those who feel isolated, excluded or in a minority. Further, seeing others like themselves overcoming difficulty, or achieving, despite real of perceived disadvantage, can do a great deal to build confidence and encourage positivity.
Just as vital, is for readers to see others in books who are different from themselves, who come from different countries and cultures, have different abilities and disabilities, lead different lives or have different experiences. Realising, through the identification stories engender, that we all have much the same thoughts and feelings, despite these differences, helps considerably in developing understanding, empathy and compassion. It helps to building attitudes of tolerance and inclusion.
Reading for a Better World
Perhaps most important of all, wide, rich reading, stimulates and develops imagination. And imagination is far more than dragons and magic spells. Imagination enables many things: the anticipation of consequences; seeing new solutions to problems; inventing or creating useful or wonderful things; understanding what it is like to be other people or to live in other places; picturing things as they were in the past or could be in the future. It is the ability to imagine how our world could be better and so, perhaps, help to make it better. Now, more than ever, the future of our children and our world needs imagination.
Reading for (more than) pleasure
‘Reading for pleasure’ is not simply reading for leisure, for entertainment. Nor is it simply reading for escape, for respite and recovery, although each of these things is enormously valuable to children. It develops both the actual ability to read and the inclination to do so. Reading for pleasure is reading for learning and enrichment. But it is also reading for well-being and personal growth. It is reading that will lead children to help make our world a better place. Reading for pleasure is a central route to education in its fullest sense. Children learn and grow with and through books. But only if they read them.
Reading books aloud to children, sharing enthusiasm for books, making books available to them, allowing them time and space to read, talking with them about what we read, together and individually; these things play a crucial role in helping children grow as individuals who read for pleasure. Is it not, then, a ‘no-brainier’ that these things must be a central to what we provide for children in primary school?
‘A story is a process: it bends time, expands space, and allows the universe to invent itself, and re-invent itself, again and again and again. It is through stories that our world becomes new. A story can’t become what it’s meant to be without a READER to read it.’ (Children’s author, Kelly Barnhill)
