A campaign encouraging reading aloud to children is probably the least costly and most effective intervention to improve educational outcomes in South Africa, especially in our poorest communities. Could we initiate it in our local communities? #readingpoweron
“The emperor has no clothes!”
This expression, from a classic children’s tale, describes a situation in which people are afraid to criticise something or someone because the perception of the masses is that the institution or person is good, successful, necessary or important.
Most children in South Africa today have probably never heard that story or learned the lesson it demonstrates! They not only suffer the darkness of load shedding but also the darkness of illiteracy!
The results from the most recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) showed that in 2021, 81% of South African Grade 4 learners could not read for meaning in any language.
The school system is an institution that is likely to take decades to reform. It will take years to eliminate the plethora of problems that are constantly reported in the media. Our country doesn’t have time to wait for the government to try to achieve those goals.
We are unlikely to convince the entire nation to switch to home education but we cannot stand by and pretend the emperor is wearing clothes. We can’t allow our passivity to condemn another cohort of learners to become unemployable, social dependents, who are reliant on state grants or worse still, on crime to survive.
We can start a reading aloud revolution. Reading aloud empowers children and gives them an academic advantage! Why and how will follow.
Why reading aloud?
There is a huge body of research that shows that reading (aloud) illuminates the ‘darkness’ of illiteracy and unemployability and that it opens the door to educational and economic success.
Researchers have discovered that the brains of children who are read to are more agile and receptive to narrative, suggesting that they have a greater capacity to process what they hear and at faster speeds than their non-read-to peers. In other words, reading aloud boosts brain function and academic performance.
Reading to preschoolers has been found to dramatically accelerate language acquisition, increase concentration skills, emotional resilience and self-mastery. This catapults children ahead of their peers when they start school. The evidence has become so overwhelming that social scientists now consider reading aloud as one of the most important indicators of a child’s prospects in life!
Jessica Logan, lead author of a literacy study and assistant professor of educational studies at The Ohio State University, calls the discrepancy between children who are read to and those who aren’t “the million word gap”. Cumulatively, over the 5 years before preschool entry, researchers estimate that children from literacy-rich homes hear a cumulative 1.4 million more words during storybook reading than children who are never read to. This impacts their language abilities and other academic skills.
How can we make a difference? #readingpoweron
If we want to end the educational ‘famine’, if we want to live in more productive communities with higher rates of employment and less crime, we need to share our ‘seed’ to enrich others, and empower them, for the benefit of the entire community.
Each one needs to encourage those who don’t read to their children to do so, to be involved in their children’s education and to make reading aloud a regular (almost daily) habit. This means you and your children’s father need to speak to your relatives, friends and neighbours, your CEO, your staff, your janitor, your office assistant, your car guards, your favourite cashier, your pastor, your hairdresser and everyone around you, about the power of reading to children! Then put your words into action and help anyone in need to get books into their hands. Lend books, buy books or get them to a library! Picture books, chapter books, reference books, even comic-style books!
A little ‘seed’, a few books sowed to your poorer ‘neighbours’, is surely easier, less traumatic and more cost-effective than paying the price for skyrocketing unemployment and crime, or worse still, becoming a victim of angry, criminal predators?
“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope.” ~Kofi Annan
Reading aloud together improves family life. Where screens and technology lure us each into our own private virtual reality, reading aloud draws us together into a shared experience that connects us emotionally. There is ample research confirming that parental interest in a child’s education (whether at home or at school) has a positive and lasting effect on the child’s academic performance. If parents or caregivers value reading, children perceive it as important too.
Reading is a key that sets families free from the jail of hopelessness and apathy. Through stories, families learn that they are not alone in their struggles. They see how characters in stories and in history overcame similar challenges.
Stories also develop cultural insight and sensitivity and teach readers that there is always more than one narrative or perspective. It develops critical thinking skills!
If adults can spare even ten minutes on most days, but ideally 30-40 minutes to read aloud to their children of any age (teens too), it would make a significant difference to their children’s education. If there are grandparents or unemployed people at home, this could be their daily job – to read to the children in their homes and communities – or learn to read along with them! Read, Gogo! Read!
Even if the child’s home language is not the language of the story book, adults can simply talk about the pictures with the child in their own language. This conversation together will build the child’s vocabulary, knowledge of the world and language abilities in their mother tongue, which is vitally important. A child’s mother tongue must be well-developed before formal lessons in a second language begin (at about grade 3 or higher).
8 Practical Steps to Switch the Reading Power On
- If you have an employee in your household or a group of employees in your business, ask them if they read to their children. Explain to them that reading will empower their children and accelerate their academic achievement, giving them a better chance of a good job or self-employment one day. Invite an expert to explain this if you must! Here is a list of 20 Benefits of Reading with Children
- Ask them if they need good books to be able to read to their families at home. They should read aloud together with children of all ages, even those that can read for themselves – tots, even teens and all the inbetweens!
- Provide books and lights: Buy them books, borrow from the library or lend them books to take home to read to their children. Be willing to suffer damage or losses while their children are learning to care for books responsibly.
- Incentivise staff with tangible benefits if they read to their kids e.g. vouchers from a bookstore so they can buy more books of their own or battery-powered lights to read by at night!
- Share books: Businesses, churches, clubs and other social organisations could start a small library of children’s books for their staff or members to borrow and share. You may find that many parents from disadvantaged backgrounds have never had exposure to (picture) story books and will delight in them too! Perhaps we can get publishers and corporations to work together to promote reading with incentives, discounts and rewards.
- Start book clubs: Neighbours could start a monthly book club, where you share books and encourage children to summarise a story and share their experiences of reading the books. (This develops language and critical thinking skills, as well as building self-confidence for public speaking.)
- Use libraries: Encourage your employees to join a municipal library and help them with the application process, if necessary, or take out books for them to enjoy at home.
- Invest in time-off work for reading: If you have employees working for you, a little time off work, for parents to get home earlier and read a story to their children, will be an investment into a family’s future, but then hold them accountable! Ask for feedback. Get staff sharing about what they have read and motivating each other too!
“A house without books is like a room without windows.” ~ Heinrich Mann
We don’t have time to wait for others to fix the broken school system. By starting a viral reading revolution, we can empower families to help their children to learn and once they recognise that they are competent and capable, they can all learn anything they set their minds to do.
There is no magic-bullet to fix all the problems in South Africa because it also requires recalibrating the moral compass of the nation, but lighting the educational darkness through a grassroots reading revolution could initiate a huge and powerfully effective first wave of healing and restoration in our communities.
What step will you take to switch the Reading Power On? #readingpoweron
Please share this article on your social media profiles. Click on the icons below to share.
You might also enjoy reading:
Literature for Lifelong Learning
Six Reasons Stories are Better than Textbooks
The Benefits of Reading with Children (over 20 benefits!)
8 Tips When Learning to Read is Hard