Being Able To Read

It is a long time since I learned to read. In fact, I can hardly remember not being able to read. I do remember my time at St George's School and that classroom with the roaring open fire in winter and the old blackboard in the corner with an alphabet and little drawings on it that helped us to learn. A is for Apple. B is for Ball. C is for Cat. D is for Dog. And so on. Beyond picturing that, I have always been able to read. From my youngest days my parents bought books for me and I read them avidly, lost in worlds of engineering and history. In September 1949, my father took me to the Isle of Man for the Manx GP motorcycle racing when I was only 8 years old. Apart from watching the races, we travelled around the island on the quaint IoM railways, going to Ramsey, Port Erin and Laxey. On the Friday, the weather was typical IoM and mist and drizzle came in off the Irish Sea gripping the island in a chilly dampness. Dad bought a book for me to read as we visited various tea and coffee shops and ate our fish and chips at lunch time. Some of the time we just sat under the covered walkway along the promenade. I still have that hard-backed book, "The Emperor's Bracelet" written by Manning Coles - an author, who was, apparently, two people. It was a full length novel about Romans and I got through all of it before I went to bed.

Being able to read and write is so absolutely fundamental to learning that to have to say so seems unbelievable. But this appalling mish-mash that passes for education in this country achieves so little that many children leave school at 18 almost functionally illiterate - in spite of their having impressive lists of GCSE passes. Sir Terry Leahy, the boss of Tesco, has complained about the quality of people applying for jobs in his company. He tells us that he is having to set up teaching systems to lay the very foundations of literacy that should have been learned at or before age seven. Also, it is my own experience that many young people have poor reading skills. One London recruitment agency has confessed that it has been seeking graduates from Hungary to fill vacancies in the UK because they have a better understanding of English and English grammar. Too many British young people, unable to rise above the standards of text messaging, were unable to express their thoughts clearly, concisely and without ambiguity. Some weeks ago, we learned that 25% of students entering a university had never read a book. Is this credible? How can anyone arrive at the doors of a university and not have read many, many books? Surely, there can be no greater indictment of the failings of teaching in English schools than a suggestion that Hungarians can read and write our language better than we can.

Without a literate population, we, as a nation, will just sink ever lower in the international pecking order. If we are to have any real economic recovery - and it is a big if - we must make things again and that will require a technically competent workforce, with good quality engineers and scientists. That can only be done if all of our children are literate from an early age.

Oh, how badly we have been governed over so many years. Is there a will to make Britain Great again? Will our citizens once again be able to travel around the world and see structures and buildings and railways and cars and so on and be able to say "We built that!"

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