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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show. With Timber Living Log Cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts. According to a new report, Irish children's reading has gotten worse since the pandemic. Well, joining me to discuss the importance of reading and how we can help our children discover and foster a love for books is author and former laureate in ANOG, Patricia Ford.
Patricia, you're very welcome. to the programme. So the report suggests that it was, I suppose, the period of the pandemic when children were not in school, when they were being homeschooled, when parents were under additional pressure that really seems to have impacted now their love of books and the amount of reading that they are doing.
But Ireland still performs really strongly internationally when it comes on literacy.
Chapter 2: What does the report say about children's reading since Covid?
So are we focusing... Too much maybe on those test scores or something more important we should be looking at, like whether or not they are going to bed at night and picking up a book.
Good morning, Ciara. It's a very interesting topic. Certainly, the good news is we are currently ranked second in the world when it comes to the literacy of 10 and 11 year olds. And that's fabulous. And it's testament, I think, to our great teachers. We have brilliant teachers in primary school, starting children on the road to reading. So that's all great and absolutely essential.
What we don't talk as much about though, is that the huge benefits are to be found when children read for pleasure. And that is slipping. we are finding it more difficult to get children to read books just to enjoy them. And I'm not sure what's behind that. I think we know the benefits. We know that in terms of an education, children who read for pleasure do far better.
They get on better in life generally, the research shows us. And this one killed me.
Chapter 3: How has the pandemic affected children's love for reading?
The research also says that children who read for pleasure at the age of 10 will be happier
It doesn't really surprise me, actually, because I do find in the world, particularly in the world where the screens have taken over, the evenings I spend reading a book as opposed to doom-scrolling on my phone, I go to bed in a much better humour.
Yeah, and me too. But that's the thing, you know, with the phones, there's an awful lot of blaming of children about phones, you know. Oh, they've no interest in anything else, they're always on their phones. When I was writing An Oak, I took a bus from Mallon to Mizzen with...
30 writers and illustrators for children and we went to schools we met i think 3 000 children along the west coast and those children when given the opportunity love books they love stories they love reading they love talking about books so it's not that the children have changed the children are the same but big tech has moved in on childhood and they are stealing their childhood you know yourself when you're doom scrolling
you end up feeling like your spirit has been quenched. And it certainly quenches your imagination.
You say the most important thing, though, Patricia, is to the key age, I suppose, is the first six years of a child's life. It's zero to four in particular. And at that age, obviously, they're not reading themselves. It's the responsibility really of their parents, carers, grandparents, guardians to read to the children.
It's at that age you need to get them to really foster that love of independent reading a bit later in life.
Yeah, we need to be reading to babies from the very beginning. And we talk about children being school ready.
Well, if you take a child who has cuddled up with somebody who loves them and read books for that first five years and compare that to a child who has never had a book read to them and one in five Irish children under the age of four are not being read to, those children don't start on a level playing field. One child is way ahead of the other already.
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