The Secrets and Words series is also being supported by BBC Skillswise, which is providing learners with an activity to participate with following each episode.  Tutors can also find classroom resources to stimulate discussion with regards to the issues raised.

The series was developed with the help of NIACE (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education), following on from the independent Inquiry into Adult Literacy it supported last year.  Sue Southwood, Programme Manager at NIACE and series consultant on Secrets and Words, comments:

There are still far too many people in this country coping with poor reading and writing skills that affect them on a daily basis. They are seriously disadvantaged as workers, parents and citizens.

Showing the lives of five ordinary people who, for various reasons, all share the same secret, is an inventive and original approach to reach adults who feel they are in a similar situation. This is where television proves that it’s not only entertaining, but that its influence can change lives for the better.

Not only do those who who read regularly have better life prospects than non-readers, research has shown they are also less socially isolated, happier, and healthier. We read aloud in our Get Into Reading groups so everyone, no matter their ability, is able to enjoy these benefits, not to mention share the sheer pleasure of reading aloud together.

The current issue of NIACE’s Adults Learning journal features an article about The Reader Organisation’s work, ‘Big Books: Small Marvels’, which movingly details some of the “remarkable” outcomes from Get Into Reading. Click here to read the full article.  

The degree is unique; the first in the country to combine the study of a full range of literature with community projects. Students, from a diverse set of age groups, will be given the opportunity to develop a reading project within their local community, in settings which currently include libraries, pubs and community centres. The focus of the course is on utilising reading in a wide variety of places.

The University will be charging a lower tuition fee for this course for the 2012/13 enrolment: fees are £2,550 per year of the course, an equivalent of £5,100 per full-time year.

For more information on the course, click here or e-mail tom.sperlinger@bristol.ac.uk

Charlotte Weber and I are now Readers-in-Residence, working closely with the Faculty of Education in creating a vibrant atmosphere revolving around reading across campus. Over the year we will be delivering weekly reading groups to first year students from the Faculty, sparking a level of enthusiasm towards the value of reading that will stay with them throughout their careers in education and their lives as a whole.

The project may still be in its embryonic stages but we are already brimming with ideas about how we can promote shared reading.

In partnership with the Faculty of Education we are setting up a Read Aloud Society as part of students’ course enrichment, we have already held a reading group in the Sheppard-Worlock Library, arranged for the library to stock The Reader Organisation’s publications, presented our vision to over 500 students across two lectures (of course, we finished with a poem!) and we are making plans for a significant part of Our Read 2012 to be based at Hope, with students playing a vital role in the delivery of one of The Reader Organisation’s biggest and most exciting projects.

The campus is a brilliant place to be, there are so many people here we can inspire to become social and active readers who go on to deliver a Reading Revolution to even more people. There is the added bonus of both Charlotte and I being fans of Paradise Lost working in the EDEN Building… which has a garden… with a bench seating two children reading Tarzan. The words and drawings are actually engraved onto the book!

Liverpool Hope University takes a holistic approach to student development and this is something we are looking to be a major part of. Our experience of Get Into Reading proves sitting down with other people and reading a good poem, novel or short story can have an amazing impact on the individual and a community. After students and staff have experienced the wonderful effects of shared reading aloud, we hope they can make the university an even more dynamic place to study and work.

The benefits of our presence should not only be felt within Hope, we would like students to engage with schools, community centres and care homes in bringing enjoyable shared reading experiences to as many people as possible. It will be rewarding for us as an organisation if we extend students’ vocational activity surrounding the university, as we use reading as the means to a harmonious relationship between students and the local community.

This is an outstanding opportunity for Liverpool Hope University and its students to set themselves apart from others, whilst The Reader Organisation engages with hundreds of Education students who will one day go on to play a huge role in the development of thousands of youngsters. It is a privilege for us to be able to spread our message to so many people, and to ensure that the Reading Revolution continues to grow.

A Dave's eye view of the book!

In early December I attended a conference in London run by the Princes Teaching Institute.  We were spending the day considering the vital interface of literature and history.  The Institute itself was established in part to affirm traditional teaching methods in a number of subjects, including English Literature, and it represents a kind of haven for hard-pressed school teachers to take a day out of their classrooms and mix with expert academics in their fields in order to share ideas.  The lectures were enriching and the seminars full of stimulating discussion, with all of us able to test out our ideas and garner those of others.  What was particularly striking and enjoyable was the free range of thought encouraged; intellectual tangents were commonplace and led to some intriguing destinations.

However, A level and GCSE students of English Literature now rarely enjoy such a style of learning.   The nature of how our subject is taught and assessed has been changing radically in the last few years, and very much for the worse.  Students are not encouraged, as we were at the conference, to explore the quirky or the unusual in their A level set texts, let alone at GCSE, at which early stage so much of the damage I will describe is done.  The introduction of Curriculum 2000 (in the same year) brought with it the enactment of ‘Assessment Objectives’* and a new, more reductive way of teaching and examining literary study.   In one of the seminars a Cambridge don was asked his view of assessment objectives at A level.  He looked puzzled, and then had to ask exactly what the questioner was referring to.  A brief explanation was offered, to which the noble professor crisply denounced the very idea of such examining methodology as ‘counter-educational’.

And so, of course, it is.  But whilst agreeing wholeheartedly with his view, nonetheless it disturbed me that a leading academic in one of our top two universities could be so apparently unaware of what has been happening to our subject in schools.  I’ve heard of ivory towers, but this seemed ridiculous.  It isn’t as though this issue is new and hasn’t been discussed widely in the media…

Read it in full here.

Today Dorset has become a national playground and retirement home but in the past it was a place of rural poverty with an important seaboard (Poole harbour), local fishing and quarrying. That was the Dorset that Wordsworth and Hardy knew, though Jane Austen writes of the beginning of tourism at Lyme Regis. We shall read a few things rather slowly so as not to burden you with a lot of time-consuming demands.

In Part I we shall read Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree, a selection of the poems and a few of his short-stories as well as poems by his friend and mentor William Barnes. After Christmas in Part II we would read Jane Austen’s last novel Persuasion, Lyrical Ballads and ‘The Ruined Cottage’ by Wordsworth and maybe short stories by T. F. Powys and John Fowles. You could sign up for either part or both.

All proceeds support The Reader Organisation.

The first session will be 10.30am – 12.30pm on Thursday 13^th October and then a further nine consecutive Thursdays at the same time, with the last session on Thursday 15^th December.

The sessions will take place in the Meeting Room at Birkenhead Central Library, Borough Road, Birkenhead, Wirral, CH41 2XB.

The cost of the course is £60, with concessions for pensioners, students and those receiving income support (£50), Get Into Reading members (£40) and Get Into Reading members receiving income support (£30).

To book your place you need to fill in a booking form, which you can find here, or contact Mike Butler, Communications Intern, at mikebutler@thereader.org.uk or 0152 207 7207.

See for yourself what it’s like to read with Brian here.

In the current issue of the Times Educational Supplement, Levi Roots speaks about his reading childhood.

In it he says how he came to England as an 11-year-old boy unable to read, write or even spell his name. This directly affected his experience of school:

“Because I couldn’t read, I sat at the back of the class with the boys who misbehaved, while the bright boys sat in the front. We called the front of the class the North and the back the Deep South…I was humble in class, because I wanted to learn and felt a bit embarrassed about not being able to read. Outside class, I was rowdy and seen as a cool country boy who could open a bottle with my teeth or a stick. My peers bigged me up.”

This is a typical scenario for many children even today in High Schools; remaining quiet in class and hiding behind a boisterous facade. In the past two years I have been reading 1:1 and in groups with children who find reading and writing difficult. Regardless of how bright they can seem conversationally, almost all of them suffer from a crippling lack of confidence or embarrassment when it comes to reading which in the most extreme cases has resulted in a child claiming he doesn’t read because he is unable to picture anything in his head.

One of the main stumbling blocks that these children have in overcoming their insecurities is that they feel alone in their situation and are unable, like Levi, to confide in their peers. If as an individual you do not have the skills to access the material how can you begin?

This is why the Get Into Reading project has been so successful; it has allowed children of all ages to hear stories and poems ‘come alive’ and to explore them slowly over time. As Levi says:

“Having books available to me and knowing that I was about to learn what was in them was exciting.”

Levi was lucky enough to have a teacher who spent time making books accessible to him but given the ever increasing pressure placed on teachers this is unlikely to happen regularly. Children need this opportunity made available to them as soon as possible and in the pressure cooker of high school, where time is so short and expectations of achievement so high, it is even more important; how can a child be expected to run before they can walk?

The author of War Horse, The Butterfly Lion and Shadow called for parents and teachers to pass on an enthusiasm for literature to their children. In his introduction Morpurgo said trying to inspire a love of literature was either ‘very energising and postive’ or ‘very depressing’.

Which way it goes depends on the quality of teaching and whether there is a flourishing library. That books are available is a right of every child, and his or her way to access the literature of their country. But it is also critical to have people who can pass on the passion for reading to them. On this we are patchy.

Through our work with schools and looked after children, The Reader Organisation has numerous project workers/managers who are the people Morpurgo is calling for, and what’s more he’s met two of them – our Young Person’s Project Manager, Sam Shipman and Project Worker Anna Fleming.

Along with other project workers, Sam and Anna have read with plenty of children who were reluctant to read, but have completely revolutionised their outlook. Not only has our young person’s team encouraged children to enjoy reading, they have read some of Morpurgo’s very own books including War Horse, Private Peaceful and Mr Skip.

Michael Morpurgo went on to criticise the way reading is employed in schools:

They [teachers], through no fault of their own, have been encouraged by this Government and the last to use literature as a tool in the Key Stage testing system. The culture is skewed for results, but if you teach with that aim there is little space for children to become inspired with a love of what they are reading.

Although we read with children, The Reader provides a friendly, relaxed and completely non-academic environment without tests or demanding questions. We facilitate the shared reading of enjoyable texts which really capture children’s imaginations. It seems again, we are providing what Morpurgo is calling for:

You need teachers who enjoy books for themselves, who have been encouraged to become readers while they were training, so that they can pass on the love of good writers to children. And you need time in the curriculum to enable teachers to share their love of a great book or poem, a storytelling at the end of every school day for half an hour. No comprehension test afterwards, simply enjoyment.

Morpurgo’s article follows a series of articles in the London Evening Standard documenting the high rates of illiteracy in the city, with one in three children not owning a book of their own and 80% of parents “struggling to find an opportunity to read with their children.” This is something The Reader strives to correct in our attempts to introduce a reading revolution.

Libraries: quiet, calm and relaxing? My earliest memory is of a library that was dramatic, daunting and dangerous. Daughter of an academic, I was a regular visitor to the library at the University of Essex. How I dreaded our library visits, anxious at the very thought of what lay inside. I did however love visiting other parts of the University; being of the plate-glass variety, the campus was a four-year old’s delight. I was young enough to skillfully perform various acrobatics in public (spinning and cartwheels mostly) whilst staring at my wonderful reflection in the huge glass-walled buildings, blissfully unaware of anyone but myself. Then, there was the fountain! Even at at the age of four, the physics of this huge contraption fascinated me: a large metal box at the top of the fountain (somehow) filled with water and then tipped its contents below, filling a range of smaller boxes, creating a cacophony of resounding splashes. How the top box filled with water, again and again, I still haven’t resolved (but I’m pretty sure that my four year old mind has distorted the image and there is a perfectly rational explanation for this seeming freak of physics). Memories of that fountain have persisted; when reading the opening scenes of The Duchess of Malfi, years later, my mental picture of Webster’s fountain was not early sixteenth century Italianate but, somewhat annoyingly, a1960s metal construction. As a child, however, I distinctly remember that the excitement of seeing (and hearing) the fountain made up for the dread of the library visits….

My experiences at the University of Essex did put me off visiting libraries for quite a few years (hence my intimate knowledge of second-hand bookshops in the various locations I have lived). I do, however, have very fond memories of a bitter-sweet experience in the library at Gospel Oak, London. This visit was with my two year old son. About twenty young children were sat neatly on the mottled carpet of the children’s section; a (what I presumed to be) teacher was sat in the middle, wedged between two fantastically high columns of books. As we approached, my son’s eyes lit-up and he ran over to the imperious woman in the centre of the circle, jumped on her lap and waited patiently for the story to begin. Bemused (but not letting this interfere with her tight-lipped demeanour) the woman sat and stared straight ahead, obviously waiting for someone to come and remove the offending object. I took my time: partly because I did not view my son’s enthusiasm as offensive but mainly because my legs were severely crossed. Once my laughter was under control I went and retrieved my son and apologised but did not get a response. What a pity that a woman surrounded by books and young children (and sat on by one enthusiast) could not humour herself : a word, a smile would have sufficed.

It was during my years as a secondary school teacher that I was more acutely reminded of my early fear of libraries. I would often take groups to the school library and noted on several occasions the frighteningly high percentage of children who were ill at ease in this situation. Choosing a book was a pressure not a joy. One girl, I remember, spent twenty minutes pacing up and down, looking at the shelves with panic in her eyes. I offered help several times but she refused. She eventually chose a book and sat down with it, looked at the cover for two minutes and then put it back and started the next round of pacing the shelves. This, unfortunately, was not an uncommon occurrence.

Books, however, were not what had scared me in my earliest experience of a library. What had scared me? It was the huge, rotating metal contraption at the back of the building. The fear would set in from the moment I stepped through the glass doors at the front of the library. Row upon row of books were daunting but exciting to my four year old self; it wasn’t the towers of books that made me quake in my little shoes. It was the lift up to the first floor (and we always had to go to the first floor). The lift that involved taking a leap of faith to get on and off it. I have since found out that these lifts are known as paternosters: moving lifts on a loop with open compartments that you have to jump on to when the bottom of the lift meets the floor of the building. A wrong move or a misjudged floor level could result in horrible injury and disfigurement (I had a lively imagination). What happened if you stayed on the lift and didn’t manage to jump off before the lift rotated at the top of the loop? This was my main concern. Fortunately I never found out but Wikipedia reliably informs that five people were killed in paternosters between 1970 and 1993; perhaps my childhood fears were well grounded (sorry about the pun).

I am pleased to say that this early associative fear didn’t result in a life-long phobia of books. In fact, I am currently running GIR groups in two Devon libraries for people living with dementia and their carers. Several attending these sessions claimed early on not to be “poem people” and their initial apprehension immediately reminded me of my early fear of libraries. These same people are now eagerly coming each week because, as one woman said,

“I’ve never read poetry before, this has made me think differently”

and another replied,

“me too but I actually really like this”.

For many people, picking up a book or coming to a GIR session has certainly been a leap of faith. Working in libraries is now the high point of my week (something I never thought I would say); although I would like to point out that there is not a paternoster in sight, just lively, interesting people and rows and rows of beautiful books.

Research for the PhD will focus on one of two areas, either

a)      the representation of everyday Medicine and/or Health in 20^th or 21^st century cultural narratives, especially those in literature and/or film;

or

b)      A study of the role of literature (or literature and film) in an aspect of therapy.

Possible topics within these areas include mental health; clinical care and the relationship between doctor and patient in narrative, with research ideally investigating  aspects of working in health care/clincial settings, accessing health practitioners and patients.

For Home/EU students the fees are met by the School of English, with successful candidates receiving an annual grant of approximately £8,000.

Full details concerning the PhD can be found here.

University of Leeds offering a PhD that links humanities and literature with medicine indicates the growing trend of academics going beyond just researching the cultural impact of artistic and literary works. The Reader Organisation Trustee Professor Phil Davis has been bringing science and the arts together by studying the effects of Shakespeare on the human brain, analysing neurological responses to the great bard.

Hopefully research arising from the PhD at Leeds will provide even more support for the idea that reading fictional literature and classics can have a positive effect on wellbeing, and can be utilised in clinical settings to help people receiving treatment in areas of mental health, ageing and physical health.

Our ongoing evaluation of Get Into Reading has shown that humanities – in this case fiction – can have a positive effect on health and wellbeing. In these surveys readers have said that they felt more able to relax, cope with stress and gained more positive feelings about life following Get Into Reading participation.

As well as community groups we have Get Into Reading programmes based in dementia care homes and groups for people with mental health or addiction difficulties, all aiming to use reading as a positive force in these people’s lives. Any research investigating the relationship between humanities and wellbeing is welcomed by The Reader Organisation as the evidence base for our work expands.

With more than fifty years’ experience teaching and sharing literature, Brian brings serious wisdom, deep attention and infectious gusto to this popular summer course.

Many short stories are too long to be read aloud at a single sitting so this year we’ll spread four of them over nine weeks. They are all by Irish writers: Sheridan Le Fanu, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen and William Trevor. They include a ghost, a New Year party, a memory of childhood and the discovery of an infidelity.

Texts for each week will be provided in instalments and if you miss a session the next issue can be sent on to you.

Sessions will run from 10.30am – 12.30pm for nine consecutive Tuesdays beginning Tuesday 31^st May until Tuesday 26^th July. All sessions will take place at this venue:

Get Into Reading
Lauries Community Centre
142 Claughton Road
Birkenhead
CH41 6EY

The cost of the course is £60, with concessions for pensioners, students and those receiving income support (£50) and Get Into Reading members (£40). 

To book your place you need to fill in a booking form, which you can download here as a Word or PDF document, or contact Mark Till, Training Administrator, on marktill@thereader.org.uk or 0151 794 2286.

Get a taste of what it’s like to read with Brian here.