Red Letter Day
World Book Day
There tends to be at least one red letter day in childhood which we carry with us through life. Mine was the afternoon my father finished work early and brought me to the local library to sign up for a borrower’s card.
He was still wearing his bus driver’s uniform with its peaked cap – there was no time to change with closing time looming –when he slotted me on to the bar of his bike and pedalled off, his body sheltering me from the wind.
I must have been five years old because I had recently learned to read at school, and although I knew there was a treat in store I had no idea what a library might be. He propped his bike against a wall (no need for locks) and led me by the hand into a musty room with bookshelves lining the walls. I was awed by his confidence in this sombre place where everyone hissed in whispers.
My father spoke with a cross-looking lady behind a desk which towered above me, signed some forms and then turned and smiled. “You’re a member now, you can choose four books and bring them home.”
Bemused, I was convinced it was a joke; adults had a strange sense of humour, I was already discovering. It had been impressed on me that books were expensive and should be treated with care, yet here I was being offered the chance to select four and keep them to read for three whole weeks. Or I could return them sooner and choose four more. All for free. My father had to help me do it because I still couldn’t believe it was allowed. I remember peeking over my shoulder at the librarian as we left the premises, convinced she was going to send a policeman after me for stealing.
Back home, finally willing to accept that I really would be allowed back week after week to borrow more books, I swanked in front of my big brothers and condescended to my younger sister who was too small to join the library. Then I buried my nose in the booty that had come my way so unexpectedly and surrendered myself to make-believe. I suspect that was a turning point in my life: perhaps the single defining moment. The realisation moved me then, and still moves me today, that in Ireland books were available to all irrespective of financial circumstances, and that the simple act of opening a book acted as a gateway to another world. But you have to be able to read first. And you have to feel confident enough to walk into a library. All their lives some people share the dread that quivered in my five-year-old self: that they will be challenged, turned away, made to look foolish if they push open the library door and handle a book.
Reading is the most significant skill any of us learn. Unless we are taught to read we are marginalised – we cannot access education which in turn impacts on our job opportunities. Reading is a vital tool in that survival of the fittest – or the luckiest – struggle to achieve a decent standard of living. Higher literacy levels are associated with higher incomes and lower levels are reflected in lower-paid jobs, the economics are as simple as that.
No wonder the United Nations declared reading a basic human right, along with adequate food, healthcare and housing. On the face of it, food, healthcare and housing seem more pressing needs, but literacy is included because it helps to address those other three. I can envisage a life without sound, movement or speech –but I cannot conceive of a life without books. And I don’t only mean reading for pleasure. Imagine the daily limitations if you have low-grade reading skills. Imagine doing your weekly supermarket shop. Or standing at a bus stop attempting to decipher the timetable. Or struggling to help your child with their homework. Or trying to fathom how to use a computer. Or navigating an unfamiliar route in your car – that’s assuming you were able to pass your test in the first place.
I’m baffled every time another report comes out, as published they are with depressing regularity, which highlights how literacy levels remain a major problem in industrialised and developing countries alike. It seems mystifying that more efforts aren’t made to address this key issue. UNESCO statistics showed almost a billion illiterates worldwide in the year 2000, and the prognosis for reducing this in many countries was not optimistic. That only applies to other countries, you may shrug, isn’t Ireland the Land of Saints and Scholars? It might have been once, but times have changed. Disturbing findings about the state of education point to deteriorating literacy levels, according to examiners of some of last year's Junior Certificate papers. The 2005 examiners said compared with 2001 “standards of literacy, in particular the ability to write in coherent, continuous prose, have declined”. And a report last year showed alarming literacy levels in poorer areas of Ireland, with more than one in four primary school children in these places performing at the lowest literacy and numeracy scales.
We may be classed as a high-income economy but poverty clearly exists here. Anyone with eyes in their head can see it. Poverty means all sorts of exclusions, among them exclusion from books – a segregation with lifelong ramifications. Experts agree that spending on literacy should be directed towards the early years when it has the best chance of making a difference. Typically children who start school behind their peers stay behind, and once they reach adulthood it’s harder to reach them. Some 500,000 Irish adults have substandard reading and writing skills but only 6 per cent of them take advantage of literacy services.
In an effort to counteract these shameful figures, the National Adult Literacy Agency has called on the Government to introduce paid educational leave for all adult workers who hold less that a Junior Certificate qualification. It may happen – I’m not holding my breath. The little girl who once was me fantasised that if I ever grew up to be rich, I wouldn’t splurge on a mansion or a fun-fair or a chocolate factory. I’d treat myself to a library of my own. All my friends could borrow its books, but only I’d be allowed to use the clickety stamp to sign them out.
I never did buy that library but I continued using the local one, despite my fear of the cross librarian who proved as daunting as she had first appeared, scolding me for hands deemed not clean enough and other infractions of her rigid code. Books enhanced my life and changed it immeasurably. I have no doubt they do as much for many lives, given half a chance, and surely that’s a cause for celebration on World Book Day today.
