Reading and Government Intervention

Francis Gilbert – author of ‘Working The System’ and ‘I’m A

Teacher, Get Me Out Of Here’.

A bit about me

• Teaching for twenty years• Key Stage 3 and 4• Author of five books• Two parent guides• Looked at reading from both

teacher and parent perspective

When I first started teaching

• No internet• No teenage fiction to speak of• Pupils read ‘whole’ books in

primary school• Culture of the ‘class reader’• Flexibility in curriculum• Media studies taken seriously

Issues

• A thin diet• No accountability• Drift• Low expectations• No set teaching style• Little technical training about

reading

During the 1990s

• Everything changed• Exam-driven school culture• SATS Key Stage 3• GCSE became very prescribed• Easy options taken eg ‘Of Mice and

Men’

Chaos in my classroom

• Friend or Foe – Ofsted: thin diet, on it forever

• A View From The Bridge – the power of swearing!

• Cloze activities, sequencing• Not appreciating the wider

implications

A new attitude

• A much more ‘technical’ approach to language was adopted

• Word structure (morphology)• Sentence structure• Paragraph structure• Whole text structure

Issues

• Genre-based approach• Audience and purpose considered• Little gobbets of text analysed to

death• Whole-text approach abandoned• Drilling for exams

The Noughties

• Ever-increasing micro-management of lessons

• Learning Objective culture• Spelling/grammar starters• Main activity• Plenary

Bucking the trend

• ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’ not ‘Of Mice and Men’

• Reading projects, not objective-led ‘gobbets’ of text

• Valuing independent reading• The importance of empathy

Government intervention – big picture problems

• League tables distort reading, make it a competitive activity

• Exam culture distorts reading, makes it leaden and dull

• Lack of holistic approach: art, history, geography, English literature not linked

Government intervention: micro-managing teachers

• The changing National Curriculum – lots of confusion

• More freedom now• But looks like more change is on

the way

Personal stories

• Teaching pre-19th century poetry, using audio guides

• Using DVDs for Far From The Madding Crowd, linking autobiographical themes to pupils’ lives

• Shakespeare: performance/chatshows/modern versions

Big picture solutions

• Can children read long, complex texts by themselves and understand them

• Use audio guides, eg VLE poetry audio guides

• Embrace social networking sites• Delve into pupils’ lives: start with the

subjective

Big questions

• What is reading?• What do pupils need to read?• How much autonomy should

pupils/teachers have?• How do we deal with the

internet/ebooks/new world of communications?

Enlightenment model

• Set reading list• Definite body of knowledge pupils

need to read• Pupils are vessels to be filled up

with knowledge• Positivist, scientific approach eg

phonics• Elevation of reason

Romantic/post-romantic model• Child-centred, project-based• Problem-solving• Pupils have autonomy: they decide

what to read within a framework• Start with pupils’ lives• Ever-changing body of knowledge, a

dialectical process• Elevation of imagination

Post-modern model

• No real truths to be read about• Reading is far more than words on

a page, reading is perception of the world

• Multiple discourses• Negotiating power struggles• A bricolage of methods• No ultimate purpose