The Government has decreed 2026 to be the National Year of Reading (https://www.goallin.org.uk) and with good reason. Reading seems to be happening less and less, not just in kids but in adults as well. The National Literacy Trust are partnering in this, working as the delivery arm for the Department of Education here in the UK. I have to hope it’s not too little, too late…
As a computing teacher in secondary school I teach kids from years 7 through to 13 (roughly ages 11 to 18). At the younger end they’ve all got to take my subject, they’re not grouped by any form of aptitude or ability, and we cover a lot of ground in the time we’ve got – if you didn’t enjoy that computing lesson, the next one will be totally different. When we hit year 9 we’re at the start of a 3-year GCSE process – 9 for prep, 10 and 11 for the actual content – and they’re either studying my subjects out of choice, because their parents forced them to choose it, or because they hated everything else more. Year 12 and 13 it’s entirely by choice. In most classes, but especially in the year 7-11, I see:
- Students who would rather give up on a task than read a simple sentence of instructions.
- Students who are making and repeating the same mistakes because they’re not being told exactly what to do and they’re not even trying to think for themselves.
- Students who cannot link what we’re doing in one lesson to what we did in the previous lesson – and who will sit staring into space rather than look back over notes they have made before.
- Students who dread exams because they can’t write for more than a few words without their hands hurting.
- Students who will be using a laptop or a scribe in their GCSE and A-level exams because they simply cannot write legibly. Can those students actually type quickly or accurately? No. Because that would mean dedicating time to practicing a skill.
- Students who hate reading anything.
I must stress that this isn’t all students but it is quite a large minority. That last point particularly concerns me. I’m a form tutor as well, and Mondays is reading time. 20 minutes of silent reading. On any given Monday I’m dealing with 5 kids or more who need to borrow a book from me because they don’t have a book. 2 kids who will hold the book and then carry on the conversation they were having before we started reading. 1 kid who will try to sleep on his book. 1 kid who’s probably holding the book the wrong way up. And at least 1 kid who has been “reading” the same book since we started the year in September. Oh, and 2 kids who are on a different book to the one they had only just started last week, 1 of whom is storming through what can only be described as “The Classics of Western Literature”. I’ve got 8 physical books and I don’t know how many eBooks on my To-Be-Read pile. I hope to clear it in the next few weeks. I can’t imagine not liking reading! I can’t imagine not having that escape.
We need to read! I can envisage a future where we don’t need to type, that’s fine. Dictate away to your computer. But reading is never going to go away. I stress to the kids under my tutelage the importance of Reading The Full Question (at least that’s what I’m technically allowed to say RTFQ stands for) in their exams. Read instructions in full before starting a task. Just bl**dy READ will you! My dad would never read fiction but you couldn’t get him away from a newspaper.
It doesn’t help that we’re in a screen-rich society. The kids in my school do the bulk of their work on screens, writing directly into their OneNotes, typing the odd thing. They find it really strange in Creative iMedia when they are handed paper and pens and told to draw their designs! To create Concept Sketches for things. I fear it’s the ubiquity of screens and that instant dopamine-hit that comes with the next reel, the next post, the next level of a game…
There’s a well-documented and proven hierarchy relating the method of taking notes vs how well you learn something. Physically writing something down, pen on paper, is better than writing directly onto a screen, which itself is better than typing. Same goes for reading. Reading something from an actual book is better than reading something off a screen. Something that’s in a book? It’s got a sense of place to it. It exists. Any recipe in my kitchen I can picture exactly where that is, in which book, on what shelf. Even if I can recall the recipe perfectly I know exactly where it is physically. Same goes for notes. If I need the stuff on SQL it’s in the second binder from my masters, bottom shelf, left-hand-side, third section back. I couldn’t tell you on which page it happened in the eBook, but I can picture the page in my paperback of Tiamat’s Wrath where it happens – if you’ve read it, you’ll know and if you haven’t, well, just put the 9-book Expanse series on your To-Be-Read pile quietly now, thank me later. Physical location aids memory and recall. But the notes the kids at my school are taking? They’re just in the OneNote. They don’t “exist” anywhere at all. They just aren’t real. And yet it’s these notes we’re expecting them to use for their revision 2-3 years after they’ve taken them.
What’s the answer? Not sure. Personally, I think humanity is very much an analogue creature existing in a digital world. Digital is good but it’s not how we work. We’ve spent decades working on analogue-digital converters to get data in to computers, with audio we go the other way all the time. So we need to do that if we want to improve memory and recall.
Next GCSE class I get I’m going to get them to work in old-school exercise books, pen on paper. And I’m going to see what happens to their exam results.
