Dibs

A noted children’s-literature advocate, author and radio host has lashed out against how literature is now being taught to primary-school kids in his native UK. The situation is similar in the US as well: Kids are not asked to tackle entire books.

Michael Rosen said that it was “absurd and pathetic” that reading assignments in schools now consist of two paragraphs of a story followed by questions. At a literary conference in London, Rosen explained that he grew incensed when his daughter brought home a worksheet from school which bore just a short extract of the Greek myth “Perseus and the Gorgon,” followed with twenty questions for her to answer. Rosen said: “That was the homework; that’s what they did on myths that term. How crazy and absurd and poverty-stricken and pathetic is that? It had nothing to do with the story.” He said that in many schools, pupils are “not reading whole books.” He added: “They are reading torn-up books that they call worksheets — a little extract which then asks children questions about facts on the worksheet.”

Sarcastically, he added: “Literacy without books: What an incredible achievement that is.”

Rosen said that after his daughter brought home the worksheet, he had gone out, bought the book and read it to her.

“What happens to the rest of the class?” Rosen fumed. “They won’t have that; instead they’re going to have these crappy little pieces of paper and twenty questions.”