A blog post by Sajid Gulzar OBE, PACT CEO.
As a child, I didn’t have many books. Well, I had one book that I bought for 60p when I was 7 or 8. I loved reading though and my weekly trips to Ward End Library were an absolute treat. It felt a magical place where I spent many an hour lost in books. It is where my lifelong love of fantasy began, I devoured anything with witches, wizards, dragons and heroic quests.
Even now, I escape the hurly burly of life by losing myself in a fantasy epic (I’m currently half way through a six book, 600+ pages per book epic and loving every page!). I still remember sitting at the feet of my teacher in the first year of junior school (year 3 in new money) listening intently and hanging on to every word of The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe. Aside from the library, I got my reading fix from comics. I couldn’t really afford them when they came out each week but the very kind lady at the local newsagents kept aside the old ones that she sold to me for the few pennies I could muster. Whilst at Highfield, one year I managed to buy a pile of old editions of my favourite comics at a jumble sale, it’s one of my happiest childhood memories – what a haul!
Today more than ever in our technologically plugged-in world, the pleasure of reading is something we need to introduce our children to. We often speak about the cultural capital our pupils need to compete and succeed in life, for me it came almost exclusively from reading. My knowledge and understanding of the world, of politics, religion, history have come from books read as a child and as a young adult. This is of course supplemented these days with pod casts and the like but the foundation came from reading. The ability to read, process, analyse and critique are essential now more than ever in a world where there is information overload. Not only is reading essential but we need to teach our children how to perceive what they’ve read. For me personally, it is the love of reading that has enabled me to ‘close the gap’ and to realise my potential as much as anything else. There were of course great teachers who introduced me to great books along the way – this continues to happen!