No child has ever fallen in love with reading from being given a textbook, argues Jay Heale
It is well known that there is a crisis in education in this country. But there is one aspect of this agonising situation which seems to have been overlooked. We are so anxious to teach children how to read that we forget to teach them to love reading.
We aim for literacy. We forget about literature.
We have a crisis in which a new (arguably better) education system, Curriculum 2005, can hardly get off the ground because hundreds of thousands of children do not have the necessary textbooks. Through incompetence or corruption or just lack of funds, provincial education departments have cancelled their orders for the new textbooks. Who’s to blame them? They do not have enough money to pay the teachers or repair the schools.
As a result, the publishing and printing industries are in crisis, as books sit in warehouses unbought, with all the expenses of editing, publishing, printing (and paper manufacturing) behind them. There is, we are told, widespread retrenchment in both the publishing and printing industries. Nobody seems to have thought of the poor authors yet.
Nobody seems to have realised that it isn’t enough to give a child the ability to read – we must teach them to want to read. Or, to put that another way, we worry that they can read; we take no notice of what they read.
No child in the world has ever fallen in love with reading from being given a textbook.
The insufficiences of the education system in this country have doomed countless children to encounter few books other than textbooks. Small wonder that their attitude is:”When I am educated I won’t have to read any more books.”
Few are even aware of South Africa’s vibrant children’s literature. If our children were brought up (at home, if the schools cannot manage it) in contact with real books, with exciting stories, with enticing factual books, with a youth literature relevant to themselves, surely we would have, eventually, a far more literate and well educated nation?
The South African Children’s Book Forum, which Ichair, recently collected and displayed all the indigenous children’s books published during 1997. (They do this every year but nobody notices.) There was an amazing total of 356 books published during that year. Even removing duplicates (of books published simultaneously in several different languages) that still leaves 263 individual titles. Seventy-nine of these books are in an African language. This number of children’s books is probably more than the annual figure for any other country in Africa.
Hardly anyone knows those books exist. Yet they are high-quality books. British book researcher and critic Lance Salway wrote recently: “One thing that constantly impresses me is the remarkably high standard of South African book design and production. It’s the equal of standards over here.”
Our authors and illustrators are good enough to have their work used by overseas publishers. Song of Be by Lesley Beake was recognised in the United States as an American Literature Association Most Notable Book for Young Adults. Niki and Jude Daly have both illustrated picture books for the prestigious firm of Frances Lincoln in Britain. Elinor Sisulu’s book The Day Gogo Went to Vote was published overseas before South Africa ever saw it. These are just a few of those who have been honoured.
Why is our indigenous children’s literature invisible? I believe it is because there is no place in which it can be seen. You can search bookshops and libraries in vain for evidence of our South African children’s literature. Australia has Dromkeen, a large country house which houses a definitive collection of the Australian children’s literature and children visit there in hundreds to meet authors and be told about books. Canada has its own Children’s Book Centre in Toronto. Austria has a four- story Children’s Book House which is government-funded.
Where can you go to see the latest, best South African children’s books? Nowhere.
On World Book Day on 23 April, the British government gave every schoolchild a free 1 book voucher. There, they have announced a coming National Year of Reading, which has kicked off early by giving 1 000 to every school which may only be spent on books. Publishers in Britain hit a different sort of crisis: they began running out of books.
Here in South Africa we have regular publication of indigenous children’s books, we have good quality authors and illustrators, we have a representative organisation for children literature, the South African Children’s Book Forum, we have been since 1992 a member country of Ibby (the International Board on Books for Young People) which is the world body on children’s literature, yet we have children without a love of books or of reading.
Isn’t it time that somebody concerned with our arts and culture gave constructive thought to giving South African children’s literature a home of its own?
Jay Heale is currently chairman of the South African Children’s Book Forum, and is soon to join the executive committee of Ibby