Does school put people off reading?

[UnquietDad]

This Grauniad writer seems to think so:

here

Shame school didn't teach her how to spell "stationery".

I have to say I didn't enjoy all the analysis of the books we read at school. I think a lot of books are open to interpretation and many teachers had their opinions on what was the correct interpretation should be and weren't willing to accept other opinions.

I also think there wasn't enough choice given to pupils as to what they'd like to read. When I did my GCSEs there were a range of books that could be used but the ones each class used were left up to the individual teachers to choose. Personally I'd have preferred more say in what we read.

What would be interesting would be to hear from people whose substantive introduction to books was through school, & not home ... as I think pretty nearly every bookworm I know was a bookworm before school ever got ahold of them. So school's influence on reading was just its influence on school-reading - if you see what I mean - not on that fantastic private enormous terrain of BOOKS that school had nothing to do with.

i agree bink. I was already a prolific reader before school and I don't think school introduced me to many books I wouldn't have met in any case - although I did go through a period of reading the Chalet School and Nancy Drew & the Baker Boys, just because all my friends were reading them . I did read more poetry at school than at home, though, and still have a copy of the book we studied at GCSE.

Slightly off topic, I have in two different situations had work colleagues who said they didn't learn to read until about 11 yrs old. They were both very intelligent people but I don't think either read for pleasure, which I find a bit sad

Our school libraries were bliss, and although I came from a reading family a much greater range of books were available at school than at home. I think it is equally true today, my children bring home new authors from school quite often.

Stationery is a hard word to spell!

my parents read to me every night until I could read for myself, more from my dad then from school... in some respects I think school had a negative effect book wise, because if i didn't like it there was no way I was going to finish it.. mind you it was the california school system which was crap at the time i was in it. I can remeber being a bit of an outcast really sitting reading stephen king in fourth grade and i guess i probably was a bit of a morose child.

in high school I had one or two teachers that I thought were practically illiterate and it really pissed me off when they gave us things like all quite on the western front which I detested.. i must admit to having gone and got the cliffs notes to it becuase i tried to read it but hated it so much.