(2003-10-07) Pullman Teaching Reading Writing Tests

Philip Pullman on mis-teaching Reading And Writing, and the problems of testing. (Educating Kids). Literacy has both a public and a private pay-off. The first empowers us in society; the second enriches us as individuals and encourages us to think for ourselves... unless, of course, the latter is deliberately "educated" out of us for the convenience of those who'd really rather we didn't... We cannot require everything to take place under the bright glare of discussion and checking and testing and consultation: some things require to be private and tentative. Teaching at its best can give pupils the confidence to discover this mysterious state, and to begin to explore the things that can be discovered there... But none of that would have happened if I hadn't been able to give them the time to do it, and the freedom from the pressure of Tests... I recently judged a Short Story competition run by a charity, and what dismayed me about the entries was they were all superficially bright and competent, correctly spelled and punctuated, and all absolutely lifeless. They all bore the marks of having been drilled into the children: this is how you open a story; here you need some dialogue; you must have a punchy final paragraph. They would all have scored highly on a test. They were all empty, conventional and worthless... If we forget the true purpose of something, it becomes empty, a mere meaningless ritual. The purpose of what I do as a writer is to delight. I hope that the children who read me will do so because they enjoy it... Finally, under reading, we really must learn not to press pupils for a response to everything. A child very seldom wants to talk about something that's made a deep impression: it's too personal, too sacred. But they soon learn what's expected, and they keep a set of stock answers that they have found will satisfy the teacher.