A literacy study has found that children often feel more comfortable reading magazines or newspapers and believe that "only brainy and boring people" read books.
The author, teacher Susan Quinn, said that instead of dismissing these forms of literature, teachers should find ways of integrating them into the classroom.
She studied attitudes to reading with a fifth-class group in a disadvantaged school in Dublin. Many children told her that their parents read magazines and newspapers rather than books.
When asked what kind of people read books, one boy said that footballers and artists did not need to read, and these were the careers he would like. However, he conceded that footballers would need literacy skills to read their contracts.
"Only brainy people and boring people read," he said, but when asked who would read magazines and newspapers, he said "normal people".
Another boy said that professors and police officers needed to read. "They need to know how to read for, say, a test. If they couldn't read, they wouldn't be a cop," he said.
Ms Quinn said that researchers often did not fully acknowledge magazine and newspaper literacy and just looked at the number of books in the home as an indicator of literacy. "In order to motivate students, we must first meet them where they are," she said. "If they are more comfortable with magazine and newspaper reading, then we need to find ways to integrate this into the classroom and not dismiss it."
Her study is one of 38 essays in a new book, Beyond Educational Disadvantage, launched by Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay in Dublin last night. He said that it would not be possible for policy-makers and educationalists to read the book "without coming to the conclusion that the need for change is overwhelming and the case for change is unanswerable".
Mr Finlay said that pre-school education spending was so low that, with Turkey, Ireland's spending did not even register in an OECD survey on pre-school expenditure.
He said that the Government's plan to introduce standardised tests for 7-year-olds and 11-year-olds would inevitably tell us that difference in performance was not caused by the fact that some areas produced children who were less bright. "The difference is caused, essentially, by poverty," he said. "And the education system, whether it likes it or not, has a huge role to play, not just in dealing with the causes of poverty among children, but also in ending child poverty."
The book's editors, Dr Paul Downes and Dr Ann Louise Gilligan, of the Educational Disadvantage Centre at St Patrick's College, highlighted the connection between poverty and educational inequality.
Recent research from their centre found that 18 per cent of pupils in four primary schools in Blanchardstown were too hungry to do their work in school either "often", "very often" or "every day".
They said that the thesis of the book was clear. "In this society of enormous affluence and privilege, ending educational inequalities can be achieved through well-thought-out and funded policy interventions."
This would require additional spending, but Dr Downes and Dr Gilligan pointed out that government spending on education as a percentage of Gross National Product had fallen in the past 10 years. They urged a "radical systemic change" in the status quo.
Literacy study: recommendations:
- Remove the "disadvantaged" label from schools, because of its negative connotations, and use a term such as "priority investment" schools or "Zone A, B, C" and so on.
- Increase the percentage of Gross National Product assigned to education by 1 per cent.
- The Department of Education and the teacher unions should work together to produce a consistent policy on the opening of schools to the community outside school hours for activities such as adult education and after-school clubs.
- The Minister for Education should draw up a mental health strategy focused on disadvantage.
- Priority should be given to providing conflict-resolution skills to teachers at second level.
- The Department of Education should fund the purchase of high-quality literature for schools and should provide a list of books graded according to reading level and relevant to Irish working-class culture.
- Increase the time given to English literacy and support teachers in making the best use of this time.
- Source: Beyond Educational Disadvantage, edited by Dr Paul Downes and Dr Ann Louise Gilligan, Educational Disadvantage Centre, St Patrick's College, Dublin.
