In my last post I drew the conclusion that adults are primarily responsible for children learning to read for pleasure, as they should be guiding the children in their care both positively (towards enjoyment of reading) and negatively (away from screens and other distractions).
A quick side note: for further reading on adult responsibility I recommend this article from
which goes further in exploring the current cultural crisis of adults who act like children. She writes:We need adults who are willing to guide children, and guard them against their worst impulses.
So, we can agree that adults hold a key responsibility in guiding the next generation (a fact that some readers may find it unbelievable to have to state, yet here we are).
Anecdotally, I believe that many of the parents who respond to my articles along the lines of, ‘thank God my children love reading’, have simply been faithfully acting out their duty of guiding their children all along.
But that isn’t to say all children love to read, even when guided by conscientious adults, and I’m not condemning parents whose children don’t enjoy reading. Some adults simply won’t guide their kids towards reading, especially if they weren’t brought up reading for pleasure. Can anything be done to help those children?
Today I’m just highlighting one additional but crucial reason that children say that don’t enjoy reading: a lack of reading skill.
As one astute reader commented on my last post (nice one, Tom):
When a child says they don’t like to read, are they telling you they don’t read well? Is the root problem reading skill?
This hypothesis is backed up by the National Literacy Trust:
…there is a demonstrable connection between reading skill and positive reading attitudes and behaviours … we can see that children and young people who enjoyed reading had higher average (mean) standardised reading scores than those who didn’t enjoy reading. The same was true when looking at daily reading.1
Children don’t enjoy reading because it’s challenging and time-consuming
The same NLT report says that 1 in 5 (19.7%) children and young people don’t continue reading if they find it difficult. Spun positively, perhaps if we can upgrade children’s reading skills, they would be more likely to persist through to reading for pleasure?
A few reflections on proficiency, with representative comments from the study:
Proficiency unlocks enjoyment
“I just find reading boring and hard.”
If you’ve ever done ‘Couch to 5k’, grade 5 on a musical instrument, held a conversation in a foreign language, or cooked an incredible meal, you’ll recognise that as you improve, it becomes more enjoyable.
What is ‘boring and hard’ at the beginning, with developed skill, becomes both rewarding and easier.
Proficiency builds stamina
“I’m not great at reading, and I have a very little attention span so reading is normally very hard for me.”
Like compound interest, proficiency enables us to reach a point where we can grow faster.
When first learning a musical instrument, just getting your fingers to the right place at the correct time can be painful and frustrating. Once your mind begins to connect the dots, you can move fingers with little or no thought, and practice becomes about increasing speed or stamina or tone or music reading. You progress from 10 minutes of misery to 20 minutes of scales, to hours of playing music.
As with reading. Early readers are easily distracted, struggling through new words and sentences. They may read irregularly, only when forced. But once those stunted reading sessions begin to take form as stories with characters, surprises, love, hope, and danger — then the reading becomes enjoyable, and the distractions fade away.
For really proficient readers, reading becomes the distraction.
Proficiency builds confidence
“I do not read much because I struggle with some things and I do not believe in myself.”
I was envious of a trumpet-playing prodigy in my year at school. Here I was at 12 years old, playing ‘Snug as a bug in a rug’, and he was playing Haydn’s Concerto for Trumpet in Eb. Ugh.
Overcome by the green-eyed-monster, I remember asking if he could play a top B sharp. “Top C, you mean?” he replied (not entirely unmaliciously) as the other musical kids scoffed.
Some years later, as my own playing skills had improved, I played duets in concert with ‘top-C kid’, who by then had become a close friend. My playing had improved, and my confidence along with it.
Reading proficiency is key to unlocking a love for reading, as with practically any skill worth learning. I’m aiming to research more on the methods and tools available for developing reading skills in future posts.
To wrap up: so far we’ve looked at the problem and evidence that children’s love for reading is diminishing, and what children have to say about why they struggle to enjoy reading. For the rest of the week we’re shifting focus to consider the benefits of reading for pleasure, which should make for slightly less depressing reading.
I’ll finish with a old trumpeter joke, with love from top-B-sharp kid to top-C kid:
Q: What's the difference between trumpet players and government bonds?
A: Bonds eventually mature and earn money.
‘Children and young people’s reading in 2024’, Christina Clark, Irene Picton, Aimee Cole and Nick Oram, November 2024