Authors rail against reading lists

Michael Rosen and Alan Gibbons line up to reject proposal for primary schools floated by national curriculum panel Children’s authors are gearing up for a fight over whether schools should be given government-approved lists of books that children should have read by the time they reach a certain age. Authors Michael Rosen and Alan Gibbons appear first in line in the latest round of what has almost become a national sport in England over the last 25 years – criticising ministers for seeking to prescribe what they see as the best texts. The idea of replicating in primary schools what already happens in the first three years of secondary schools is being floated by a small panel of experts set up by the education secretary, Michael Gove, to review the national curriculum for five to 16-year-olds, according to the Times Educational Supplement (TES) . Rosen , a former children’s laureate, told the TES : “I’m all in favour of people recommending books to each other. What I’m utterly against is some centralised list which is supposed to be the government’s view or the state’s view. “If Michael Gove wants to suggest his list, that’s fine. But if it is the government’s list or the DfE’s list, I would profoundly distrust it.” He later said: “If Michael Gove says who’s recommending them [the books and authors], then that’s democratic, that’s the way we share ideas. “If it’s just a dictation that this is the way we read books, then we don’t live in a totalitarian country, we’re not in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where they dictated what books you have to read.” Gibbons said: “What we need to see in schools is trust in teachers and librarians. We need a network of people who know about books and keep up to date with children’s literature, who have the freedom to select books according to their pupils’ backgrounds and interests.” Under the current primary curriculum children are expected to be introduced to a range of writing, including fiction, poetry, myths and plays, but there is no central list specifying books or authors. In secondary schools, the current curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds includes a recommended list of authors and demands that pupils study Shakespeare. In March, Gove suggested that children from the age of 11 should be reading far more than at present – up to 50 books a year . He claimed pupils were only reading one or two books, often Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, and invited children’s authors to recommend their own favourites. The current children’s laureate, Anthony Browne, said then: “It’s always good to hear that the importance of children’s reading is recognised – but rather than setting an arbitrary number of books that children ought to read, I feel it’s the quality of children’s reading experiences that really matter. Pleasure, engagement and enjoyment of books is what counts – not simply meeting targets.” The prospect of state-directed reading has been a bone of contention for decades but arguments have been more heated since another bibliophile education secretary Kenneth Baker began laying the groundwork for the national curriculum in the mid-1980s. Guardian writers have never been backward in recommending their own favourites. Last May a list for five to seven-year-olds included Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl, The Worst Witch, by Jill Murphy, and The Legend of Captain Crow’s Teeth, by Eoin Colfer. Inevitably JK Rowling’s Harry Potter was recommended for 8 to 11-year-olds, as were CS Lewis’s Narnia books and Jacqueline Wilson’s The Story of Tracy Beaker. The Department for Education said: “We want to create a world-class curriculum that will help teachers, parents and children know what children should learn at what age. We are currently reviewing all aspects of the national curriculum and will consult fully on the programmes of study when the review concludes.” The review is still in its early stages. Recommended programmes of study for English and other core subjects are expected to be put out for consultation early next year with decisions made by ministers in the spring. They will be sent to schools in September 2012. Literacy National curriculum Schools Education policy Michael Gove Michael Rosen Anthony Browne James Meikle guardian.co.uk

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