Books R Ded Gud (A literate generation?)

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	A literate generation?
Date:	19/11/00 (9 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Books can be an enormously enriching thing

Disadvantages: But what we want is a population who can read

It's difficult to imagine where to start with this: I mean, can you really say that we're going backwards when a far higher percentage of the population can read now than could in 1901? We may not be living up to where we aspire to read, but at least issue like adult illiteracy are bing addressed, in a way that they weren't a few decades ago.

People talk about email destroying literacy because it encourages people to write in a shoddy way. In fact, email could be the saviour of the written word because it forces people to communicate via text, rather than speech, and people's poor spelling and expression is exposed in an email. It's text messages on phones that might alter people's habits, but then, mobile phones are a complete blight on humanity anyway.

There was a big fuss about the lack of knowledge amongst young people a few weeks back - few could name three books by Dickens and nobody could say who wrote 'Paradise Lost'. This kind of thing does no good for the cause of literacy, because the vast majority of people wouldn't get any pleasure out of classic fiction or seventeenth century allegorical poetry. When we talk about literacy, we need to ensure that people can fill forms in, read road signs and negotiate supermarkets.

What we should ensure is that schools are doing the ground work, turning out kids who can read and comprehend simple English. We also need to foster a culture which says that no matter how old you are, you can get tuition and encouragement to read.

Once this is done (and despite evil Chris Woodhead's outbursts, I'd bet that the vast majority of schools are doing this already), it would make sense to encourage people to read anything, rather than being too prescriptive about it. I'd hate to think of people reading Jeffrey Archer rather than Julian Barnes, but the truth is, if educators and politicians get too snotty, they'll just turn people off. So peop
le should be as imaginative as possible in what they choose to teach kids. The important thing is to make people literate, not cultured. Anyone who imagines that we can create a nation of Joyce fans is kidding themselves. What we need is a nation which can read.

Summary: