Skip to content

So, whadda we do about it?

Research from BookTrust found that only half of children aged 1-2 from low-income families are read to daily. Furthermore, children from low-income families who do well at the end of primary school are twice as likely to have been read to early in their lives.

“Reading isn’t a silver bullet to solve world poverty, I know that. But it is a major way to improve equality and bring fairness. To dramatically improve the quality of family life and open up possibilities, opportunities. We know children who read have tools for life at their disposal,” Cottrell-Boyce said.

“It is not right and not fair that children who could benefit the most are deprived of a life that is rich in reading.”

I think there’s a truth there but that’s not the point. So, what do we do about it?

Second hand kiddies books are what, 50p each? So each household with a kid in it gets £10 to create a library. We’re done. Or, at least, we’re as done as government policy can make it.

That is, even if there is a real point here there’s not a grand amount that the state can do about it…..

31 thoughts on “So, whadda we do about it?”

  1. Obviously, there has to be a reading school set up, with specially trained people to teach the children how to read and other people to read to them. These people have to have a union to make sure they’re not exploited by evil far right capitalists. Parents have to pay for all this. If they can afford it they have to be taxed on what they pay, If they can’t, people have to be employed to work out how much rich people should give the parents. People have to be employed to pay the parents. People have to be employed to make sure the books are proper approved books. People have to be employed to read the books to make sure they are proper. People have to e employed to make sure the people editing the books are State approved people.
    Much better than unapproved oafs who don’t have the right views reading to children…

  2. It comes down to personal responsibility, which seems to be rather unfashionable among certain demographics. It isn’t hard to understand that literacy and numeracy are essential life skill and that your kids will do better in life if they acquire them early. I don’t ever remember my parents reading to me but reading was very much encouraged at our house. To begin with a lot of our books were old and tatty and were mainly hand me downs, I would just read anything I could get my hands on. Later we had a bit more spending power and bought books that we actually wanted.

  3. Give the poorest families £10 and they’ll spend it on food rather than books because food is now and books are about the future. Even if they did get books, the parent(s) are going to be working all hours of the day so won’t have time to read to the kids (and might even have low literacy themselves). Poverty is a trap. Special interest (BookTrust) complaining doesn’t help, it just makes the bien pensant nod their heads.

  4. Well duh, there’s a lot the State can do about it. It can create the National Book Service that delivers books to the door of the poor and diverse. Books of a suitable nature naturally, none of that freedom stuff or giving the poor ideas of how to improve themselves. And in doing so provide lots of nice well paid and easy jobs for the likes of dim middle class Liberal Democrat voting women who have degrees in literature and womens studies.

  5. BiND at the ferry terminal

    Even easier, remind people that the BBC still produces Jackanory and where they can find it.

  6. The Meissen Bison

    “It is not right and not fair that children who could benefit the most are deprived of a life that is rich in reading.”

    Mutatis mutandis, all children benefit to the same degree. His argument is surely that the nipper whose parent(s) were not read to is more likely not to be read to but he exresses it coyly so as not to offend.

    Perhaps there should be a Public Reading Service in which parents are disbarred from reading to their own children.

    Tim – giving parents who don’t read books £10 to buy books sounds like a ripping wheeze. For eBay.

  7. What can the State do about it?

    1) reform the tax & benefits system to discourage the feckless from having children.

    2) remove the restrictions and hurdles on adoption for when they do

  8. “That is, even if there is a real point here there’s not a grand amount that the state can do about it…..”

    What a defeatist attitude! There’s a commission to be set up, a Reading Tsar, grants for reading charities, inspections of nursery care, checks on parental literacy and attitudes to be included in health checks, a massive advertising campaign, a government publishing agency, and an army of household inspectors and advisors to be recruited, trained, and brought under the auspices of Ofsted.

    Where there’s a will, and somebody else’s money in the form of taxes, there’s always a way.

  9. I wonder how they mangled statistics to get to that conclusion.

    Especially useless since the parents in that poverty bracket are quite often only semi-literate to begin with, if they speak english (at home) at all.

  10. The charity shops are full of cheap books, free books are available online…none of it helps if parents a) don’t see reading to their children as a positive thing or b) can’t themselves read.

    But of course, rather than address the social causes, we look at providing the physical goods. Because that can be measured easily.

  11. “It can create the National Book Service that delivers books to the door of the poor and diverse. Books of a suitable nature naturally, none of that freedom stuff or giving the poor ideas of how to improve themselves.”

    Dolly Parton’s charity does exactly that. Just sends books to poor parents. And yes, there really are those complaining that the books are just one kids enjoy, ones that do not critique, properly, the heteronormative ableist etc etc society…..

  12. I was going to adduce Dolly Parton’s charity to the discussion, but of course, others brought it up already. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished – it must take a very special kind of sociopath, educated in the very best universities, to find fault with such a selfless and positive effort. The kind of person who would criticize a blood donor because they voted for Farage/Trump (pick side of pond as appropriate).

    llater,

    llamas

  13. If only there were a massive multinational book vendor, with its own distribution arm. They would likely have large piles of unsold kids books that are heading for the pulping machine. They could even ask Dolly for advice on setting up a free-books-for-2-year-olds system.

  14. The local library has some sort of entertainment for children.

    But I don’t know what it is since I never go there when the kids and their mums are cluttering up the place.

  15. “children from low-income families who do well at the end of primary school are twice as likely to have been read to early in their lives”

    Being read to would seem to impart an important skill with regard to the results of schooling.

    That is, sit down, shut up and fucking listen.

    The implication would seem to be that higher diagnosis rates for certain conditions would map directly onto those groups identified by the survey.

    “deprived of a life that is rich in reading” then doesn’t follow.

  16. Reading and writing are keys to social and geographic mobility. Some parents don’t want that for their kids, as they regard them as old age insurance.

  17. …awaiting moderation…
    FFS sake Tim. How can I tell if someone has already made the same point?
    As a start you could filter comments by the regulars. Just. allow comments from regular emails t be published at once. That can’t be hard.

  18. JuliaM,

    “The charity shops are full of cheap books, free books are available online…none of it helps if parents a) don’t see reading to their children as a positive thing or b) can’t themselves read.”

    Get onto any local Facebook group, it’s awash with parents giving stuff like books and kids clothes away.

    “But of course, rather than address the social causes, we look at providing the physical goods. Because that can be measured easily.”

    The thing I realised as I was growing up is that nearly everyone is the master of their destiny. I knew a guy from a council estate who got into programming via an evening class. He came to work with us, and would work late to try and get things fixed to do his job and deliver on it. Top bloke. Then there’s people who got sent on a course at work, dossed around all day, left dead on 5pm. Didn’t care if he delivered or not.

    Same with single mothers. Some of them will spend nothing on themselves, try and find ways for their kids to go to museums, get books, get a computer. Others are sitting complaining about their lot while wearing an Apple Watch and having tattoos.

  19. What? No!

    What you do is create a task force to study the problem, whose recommendation will be that a new government department will be stood up to hire transexuals to read government supplied books to children – mandatory attendance, no parents allowed – all at taxpayer expense.

    How else are we to ensure the kids are ready to and exposed to allowed thought?

    Let the parents handle it, yeah, right.

  20. Recruit all those trannies who can’t get a proper job to read to children. They could even offer a home visit service.
    What could go wrong?

    /s just in case

  21. McDonald’s provides free books to kids – according to their website they have provided 160 million so far. That’s quite a lot of books.

  22. In the US, there’s a service called ‘Hoopla’. It’s an app you load on your phone, and it’s associated with your local public library – you need a library card to subscribe. One you are subscribed, you can virtually borrow from over 500,000 titles, books, magazines, movies, TV shows, anything you can borrow from your local library, you can read/view/listen to on your phone. It’s all free, paid for out of your library millage, and it’s 100% ad-free. No matter where you are, you can read virtually anything, any time, for nothing. I can’t imagine a more barrier-free path to reading. With tools like that available, I suspect that the issue of children not reading or not being read to is not for want of access to reading matter, but rather for want of cultural imperatives.

    llater,

    llamas

  23. It’s well beyond my abilities to change a single toggle on anything. I am awaiting the code monkey returning from whatever he’s doing…

  24. Person in Pictland

    A friend has a lovely story. His daughter was reading to his granddaughter, from a book that plays a snatch of music when you turn a page.

    “Ah”, said Mama, “that’s from Swan Lake.”

    “No, Mama”, said the three year old, “it’s from the Nutcracker”.

    No doubt the Labour response will be to forbid little girls from going to dancing classes.

    (For little boys I can recommend Scottish Country Dancing classes. Swords!)

  25. While it’s nice having a library on your phone, that’s not so great for discovering new stuff. For that, shelves are very good as you get a sense of which parts you have looked at and which parts might hold something new.

    Children could do as I did and call into their local library while walking home from school. Except, of course, it’s now considered too dangerous to let children walk home from school, so they can’t

  26. Clearly the state should do something that benefits ME in a fruitless attempt to use big hammers to crack small nuts the wrong way. I put myself forward for the role of poor kiddie book tzar, I only want a couple of hundred a year.

  27. Furthermore, children from low-income families who do well at the end of primary school are twice as likely to have been read to early in their lives.

    One is tempted to wonder whether “being read to” has anything material to do with it. I’m more of the opinion that the type of parents who read to their kids are the type of parents who take more interest in the socialisation and education of said kids, and that “reading to them” is a symptom rather than a cause.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *