Frank Furedi writes in “Let’s Turn a New Page in the World of Reading” about children in the UK (and the USA) not really enjoying reading any longer:
[...] Today, even the highest achievers are more likely to regard books as a means to an end rather than as a source of fun. One important reason for this is the signals that schools themselves send to their students. Schools tend to uphold reading instrumentally; that is, it is celebrated as a means to an end. When I recently asked a group of high-achieving 11-year-olds what they thought about reading, they showed that they could talk the talk. They told me that reading was important for their ‘career’ and for ‘getting ahead’. Their attitude towards reading books was not dissimilar to dogs jumping through hoops to gain a bone in reward.
Such attitudes will prevail so long as policymakers and educators privilege ‘literacy’ over ‘reading’. The UK government’s Literacy Strategy, promoted through the ‘literacy hour’ in schools, is devoted to the promotion of reading skills rather than to reading. Its narrow, tick-box approach tends to treat reading as a task or a chore, and does little to create a culture in which reading is valued for its own sake [...]
