Next month the Ministry of Education will be introducing a new enhanced literacy programme in schools across the country. Minister Priya Manickchand was quoted as saying that “once we are able to change the way children read and comprehend, we are going to change whether they want to stay in school and when they stay in school how they perform.”
At the time of the announcement of NGSA results the Minister said it had been determined that the reason children were unable to cope with the papers and the work associated with these was their literacy levels. “We are sure about that except for children with learning difficulties,” she said. In order to confront the problem the Ministry had created a literacy department and had appointed another Assistant Chief Education Officer to handle literacy across the country. This newspaper understands that 15,000 primary and nursery school teachers will be trained in literacy.
This would not be the first literacy programme both within the context of the school system and outside it to be instituted, although there has never been any feedback on the outcome of any of them. There may be a number of reasons why previous efforts in this area have not produced the results required, but one of them may relate to the fact that an unknown, but possibly significant number of adults in the society are not functionally literate themselves, and that this goes back two and maybe three generations. While the Ministry of Education has some idea of the extent of the problem among school-age children, to the best of anyone’s knowledge no one in recent times has undertaken a survey of adult illiteracy.
The point in this regard is that parents in particular have a great influence on their children’s reading habits and therefore their literacy levels, and those pupils who perform well in the system invariably come from homes where education and reading are valued, and children are encouraged to read. This applies even if the parents themselves are not particularly educated.
Many of our children, however, do not come from such backgrounds, and will probably never have been read stories when very small, and will never have been given children’s books to read themselves. They may come from a single-parent home where the mother, even if literate, is grossly overworked and cannot spend the time reading with her offspring. In any case she will not have the money to buy them books. Everything depends in those circumstances on the input of the school, which while it may succeed in making children literate will not necessarily impart a love of reading.
The importance of reading outside the school environment is illustrated by a recent study of data on more than 10,000 students in the US which found that children should read for 12 hours a week to improve their performance in school. Longer than this was not recommended, because that caused a decline, possibly because of too much sedentary behaviour. It was not just performance which was affected by reading for pleasure, but the size of children’s brains also increased and there was a positive impact on cognitive ability and mental well-being. “Reading for pleasure in childhood was linked to improved school academic achievement in adolescence,” Professor Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge and co-lead author of the research was quoted as saying in the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
The newspaper reported that analysis of brain scans of teenagers found that those who had started reading for pleasure at a young age “showed moderately larger total brain areas and volumes, and also showed differences in brain regions previously shown to relate to improved mental health, behaviour and attention.” In the light of this Professor Sahakian emphasised that “Reading isn’t just a pleasurable experience – it’s widely accepted that it inspires thinking and creativity, increases empathy and reduces stress.”
When comparing children who started reading for pleasure at different ages, it was discovered that it was the ones who began between the ages of two and nine who performed better on a variety of tests, had better mental well-being and fewer behavioural problems. Co-author Professor Jianfeng Feng from Fudan University in China and Warwick University added that “We encourage parents to do their best to awaken the joy of reading in their children at an early age.”
They are talking, of course, of developed societies where most parents can read, and access to books is very much less of a challenge than it is here. Even so, the London Times version of the research reported the authors as referring to the need for improved access to books and libraries. Before we in this country get to that stage, however, children first have to be able to read. It is helpful that the Ministry is proposing not just to train primary school teachers in literacy, but also nursery school teachers. Nursery schools are a particularly good environment for teaching reading and encouraging young children in a love of books and stories.
Even if the Ministry makes headway with its literacy programme, there is still the problem of a lack of books, as well as of parents who do not understand the need for children to have access to reading material. Where the latter is concerned, the new Department of Literacy should perhaps put its mind to devising a programme for persuading parents – especially the ones who never come to PTAs or show no interest in their children’s education – of the importance of reading to their children’s health, development and welfare, and not just their education. In order to sell their message they should develop some pithy slogans, among other things.
As for the availability of books, Mr Rawle Small, writing a letter to this newspaper early last month deplored the absence of community libraries. He wrote: “Community libraries are resource hubs that connect people to information and people. Many offer a multitude of services including volunteer opportunities, full and part-time work, after-school homework help, photocopying, printing and scanning services, free wifi, book clubs, computer classes, skills training and so much more.”
Mr Small was not, of course, thinking of children specifically, but the concept could be adapted to include special arrangements for children, where they could go after school, hear stories read and read books themselves, among various other services. It would be particularly helpful for single parents who work late, and whose children are either left alone at home, or run around the streets unsupervised. The problem is, as Mr Small identified, there are insufficient public libraries in the country. The real problem would come with the hinterland, which would require some innovative solutions.
It is true the National Library has launched a commendable literacy programme, ‘Storytime in the Park’ and the ‘Read Guyana Challenge’, but these are limited in their geographical reach and are not programmes to which single parents can send their children – particularly young children ‒ every day. In addition, one suspects that those who do attend come from homes which in any case promote reading. In the end, the Ministry has to cater for those who do not have that advantage.
A toddlers’ reading programme was inaugurated in early 2018. It was intended to promote reading for children under three and was supposed to be established at over 300 health centres and 360 childcare facilities throughout the country. Each of these was supposed to set up a library or reading corner for the children. Nobody knows what happened to it, and why presumably it failed. Perhaps the Ministry might look at it again to see if it had any redeeming features. At the very least this is the stage where it is easiest to catch mothers, so they can be persuaded of the importance of learning to read for their child’s development.
We have wasted too much time in the past committed to the notion that one laptop per child would solve our education problems. It won’t. At least the Ministry of Education is convinced that literacy and reading is the necessary approach. It needs to explore as many avenues as possible to get its reading message across to parents in particular.
