Intimidation. Birthdays. Reading.

 Here are two headlines about intimidation from today’s newspaper: 

“Johnson accused of trying to intimidate MPs as government lawyer calls Partygate inquiry ‘flawed and unfair’ – “

“Cressida Dick ‘felt intimidated’ into resigning as Met chief, review says”.

This must say something about the way our country is working at the moment. Is there anywhere that works by persuasion and reasoned argument rather than by bullying?

Late this morning I went to meet my daughter and various of her offspring at a local cafe to celebrate her now six-year-old’s birthday. Various members of the family got together to give her presents. As the birthday girl’s small brother has his third next Friday I took along a present for him as well. I had knitted matching cardigans for the children. The small boy was so impressed he insisted on wearing his immediately, despite the sunshine.

Books featured among the presents for the six-year-old, who enjoys a good story and is on the cusp of independent reading. She already writes stories - very short stories with eccentric spelling but it’s a start. 

I read in today’s paper that almost one in five children in this country do not have access to books at home, according to some new research. One reason given is the rising cost of living; 64% of parents say the amount of money they have to spend on books for their children has decreased. There are, of course, libraries, although many library services have been cut in recent years. Our six-year-old has just received her own copy of a book she kept renewing from the local library as she enjoyed it so much. And it is very pleasing to own books that you have truly enjoyed.

Owning books is integral to encouraging children to get into regular reading habits and for increasing literacy levels, said Jonathan  Douglas, chief executive of the National Literacy Trust, who urged that “getting books to children is more important than ever”.

“Low literacy levels can hold you back at school, lock you out of the job market, affect your physical and mental health, and even your life expectancy,” he added.

Thinking about books and reading, I read that a landmark study has described the way primary school pupils are taught to read in England as “uninformed and failing children”, calling on the government to drop its narrow focus on phonics. Researchers at UCL’s Institute of Education say the current emphasis on synthetic phonics, which teaches children to read by helping them to identify and pronounce sounds which they blend together to make words, is “not underpinned by the latest evidence”.

A friend of ours who was an expert on how children learn to read always said that multiple methods should be used. No one method suits everyone. My gut feeling is that phonics works fine for phonetic languages like Spanish and Italian, with reasonably consistent rules of pronunciation. English, and French for that matter, have too many exceptions to the rules and letters which we simply do not pronounce at all. Sometimes I am amazed we ever learn to read and write but I suppose that in the end the trick is to make children want to hear stories and in the end read independently. 

There we are!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!