Today's children are less literate than their grandparents

[tinfoilhat]

Bookstart schemes are a waste of money. Books are not expensive, but these schemes are.

 

Libraries that are barely used should be closed. They don't help youth literacy if the youth don't use them, the only youths I ever see in my local library are using the free PCs to play games and use facebook.

 

It is a parents job to raise their child to be able to read and be literate. If they are not doing this, it is tantamount to child abuse.

 

That might stop the rot, but some of the emails I get from younger people are bearly literate. I'm not blaming one party or another but if I'm communicating with a young teacher and its my emails that make the most sense, we as nation should be worried !

[Helj]

Every study has shown that books and libraries make a significant difference to literacy. Places like Korea that are moving far higher up the literacy and numeracy tables are building over 100 new libraries. Why have we got it so wrong? Why aren’t we encouraging their use rather than closing them? And why isn’t it compulsory for schools to have libraries? The internet isn’t a solution to everything-you need to be literate to use it!

[milquetoast1]

Hang on a minute. We keep getting told about the increasing numbers of schoolchildren for whom English is not their first language, or even a language at all. Isn't it possible that it's the initial abilities of the kids themselves, rather than falling education standards, that could be contributing to measured literacy? Doesn't this make a direct comparison with our grandparent's generation a bit unfair?

[mort]

Yet more tedious bickering removed from a thread. If you start it up again here or elsewhere then you are going to find your accounts suspended.

[SpikeMac]

Bookstart schemes are a waste of money. Books are not expensive, but these schemes are.

 

Libraries that are barely used should be closed. They don't help youth literacy if the youth don't use them, the only youths I ever see in my local library are using the free PCs to play games and use facebook.

 

It is a parents job to raise their child to be able to read and be literate. If they are not doing this, it is tantamount to child abuse.

 

Surely, if you rant about literacy, you should be able to construct a sentence properly.

 

You might also be able to use an apostrophe.

[Mister M]

Today’s report which says that the current generation will be the first to be less literate or numerate than their grandparents comes at a time when this government is allowing local authorities to close almost all their local libraries.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/08/england-young-people-league-table-basic-skills-oecd

This is despite the fact that previous OECD studies have shown that:

"The influence of reading for pleasure was greater than that for having a parent with a degree."

The total effect on children's progress of reading often - reading newspapers at age 16 and being a regular library user - was four times greater than the advantage of having a university-educated parent, the study suggested.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24046971

All governments and opposition parties are always talking about improving literacy and numeracy and yet when in power none of them support actually encouraging young people to develop reading skills. Libraries are a legal requirement in prisons, but not in schools. Many schools now don’t have libraries so how can children without easy access to books develop reading as a leisure activity.

Local public libraries used to be a haven for many young people to study in and have a space to do homework, as well as choosing books. The space has now gone.

The law says that local government must provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient library service’ but the Government doesn’t allow then to raise enough money in council tax to pay for them-or even greater essentials such as social care. I applaud people who volunteer to keep libraries open but on what basis? They will have no training or funding for the selection and purchasing of new books and can’t assist people in using online resources-the library is not just about fiction,

Isn’t it short-sighted to abolish libraries, and to not even have them in every school, when standards of literacy are going down?

 

 

You raise some really good points, and it made me think about how in many recently built homes and flats where space is often at a premium, a library could be both a remedy and a real eye opener for many children.

 

I was a volunteer with the literacy and numeracy hour at a local school about 10 years ago and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction for the very brief time I did it. It was then I became aware of the huge amount of paperwork (most of it unnecessary), the meeting of targets and endless concern about league tables all of which detracted from the relationship between the teacher and their pupils.

 

I do think we have a wider culture which doesn't respect education or even learning for its own sake. People are too quick to disparage the gaining of knowledge if it doesn't lead to work or money......

 

Doesn't surprise me at all with today's leftie teachers more interesting in promoting diversity and multiculturalism than they are in teaching "old-fashioned" things such as being able to read, write, speak and add up.

 

But people, particularly right wing politicians and their ideological brethren in the press were saying pretty much the same thing in the 1960s onwards; except in those days it was "trendy teaching methods".

You'd think with all this inculcation of Marxist politically correct dogma about diversity and multiculturalism there'd be a decrease in the rates of hate crime, not an increase

[Happ Hazzard]

I seriously doubt there is more hate crime today than there was in the 60s. Only back then it likely wasn't called "hate crime" it was just everyday life.

[Mister M]

I seriously doubt there is more hate crime today than there was in the 60s. Only back then it likely wasn't called "hate crime" it was just everyday life.

 

I should have made myself clearer, I was referring to a report by ACPO which showed that hate crimes against disabled people were on the increase.

[Michael_W]

You raise some really good points, and it made me think about how in many recently built homes and flats where space is often at a premium, a library could be both a remedy and a real eye opener for many children.

 

Kids stopped using libraries years ago, they were not that popular with my generation, and I'm 53 next.

 

I was a volunteer with the literacy and numeracy hour at a local school about 10 years ago and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction for the very brief time I did it. It was then I became aware of the huge amount of paperwork (most of it unnecessary), the meeting of targets and endless concern about league tables all of which detracted from the relationship between the teacher and their pupils.

 

That's the world we live in, target's are here and now, there is no getting away from them, not in school and not in the workplace and should not really be used as an excuse for a drop in literacy or numeracy levels.

 

I do think we have a wider culture which doesn't respect education or even learning for its own sake. People are too quick to disparage the gaining of knowledge if it doesn't lead to work or money......

 

Young people have never written or read so much as today's youngsters, the amount of text messages, tweets and facebook updates they send and consume sees to that.

 

But people, particularly right wing politicians and their ideological brethren in the press were saying pretty much the same thing in the 1960s onwards; except in those days it was "trendy teaching methods".

You'd think with all this inculcation of Marxist politically correct dogma about diversity and multiculturalism there'd be a decrease in the rates of hate crime, not an increase

 

My bold (last sentence)

Hate crime is still in the creation stage, it has to increase before it can decrease ..... now what hateful thing can we criminalise next

[Vague_Boy]

Today’s report which says that the current generation will be the first to be less literate or numerate than their grandparents comes at a time when this government is allowing local authorities to close almost all their local libraries.

 

But children haven't suddenly become less literate overnight. Unless there's been a massive spate of cranial traumas that somehow haven't made the news.

 

Libraries don't seem to have made much difference to the current generation. And since when were libraries much use in developing numeracy skills?

 

Now, let's look at the story in more detail:

 

The Government has laid the blame at Labour's door after a report found school leavers in England have some of the lowest literacy and numeracy levels in the developed world.

 

Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ranked England as 22nd out of 24 countries in literacy and 21st in numeracy.

 

The OECD research also concluded that recent school leavers have lower levels of basic skills than their grandparents.

 

LINK

 

School leavers. These who [a] had the benefit of libraries during their school years but also the crippling disadvantage of being "educated" in the modern education system.

 

Given that these school leavers will be 16 today, they would have been born around the time that NuLabia first took office.

 

So really, who is to blame? The government in power now or the government in power during 80% or more of their formative years?

 

Is Michael Grove somehow time traveling back 10 years to sabotage Tony Blair's "education, education, education" campaign promise?

 

Given what we now know about that war mongering weasel, "disinformation, disinformation, disinformation" is more Blair's style.