A KILLER READ, LITERALLY
Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read and write
The opening line of Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone written more than forty years ago. I found it stunning then – and still do. One sentence, thirteen words. And yet the content conveys volumes. From the first word we know who the murderer is and then the name of her victims but much, much, more than that – we learn Eunice’s motive.
So ashamed of her illiteracy, Eunice took the lives of four people to stop what she saw as a shameful secret being exposed; the stigma was too great to bear.
As someone who’s read fluently from the age of four, I’d taken the ability for granted. Easy as ABC, wasn’t it? Eunice’s plight – by which I mean Baroness Rendell’s brilliant novel – made me reconsider, urged me to really think about what being illiterate means.
Difficult, isn’t it? I could barely imagine a life unable to read, of not being surrounded by books, of being cowed by the written word.
I’ve always written for a living. I love words, the way they sound, the way they look on the page or screen. I love the notion that an alphabet of just twenty-six letters is the basis for an infinite variety of lexical creations.
Fictional fantastical
Words open our eyes and our imaginations; they take us on awesome adventures, journeys to far-flung worlds – factual, fictional, fantastical; past, present and future. Along the way they introduce us to a vast array of people, places, products; issues, ideas, information.
Leaving aside the utter pleasure words give, on a purely practical level they’re vital to everyday existence. They help us find our way around, tell us the price of goods in a shop, the dishes to choose from a menu, which films are showing at the cinema. We know what’s going on in the world by reading newspapers, magazines and websites.
Poetic to prosaic
From the poetic to the purple to the prosaic – words are pretty versatile. In just one, they’re indispensable.
But not to someone who can’t read.
What if a string of letters is incomprehensible? What if it’s a struggle to make sense of the simplest sentence? What if deciphering a set of directions is beyond someone’s capability?
For someone, read 9 million people in the UK. That’s 16 per cent of adults who are functionally illiterate.
The figures are from the National Literacy Trust. The trust estimates that 5.1 million people in England have a reading age of an eleven-year-old child and that one in five adults in the UK struggles to read and write.
Some of the findings for children make equally grim reading. That’s not a play on words – there’s nothing funny about the statistics:
One in four British children struggles with basic vocabulary.383,755 children and young people in the UK don’t own a book of their own.One in five children left primary education in 2018 unable to read or write properly. (DfE)One in five.
As the NLT states, ‘This means that they will be held back at every stage of their life: as a child they won’t be able to do well at school, as a young adult they will be locked out of the job market, and on becoming a parent they won’t be able to support their child’s learning – so the cycle continues for another generation.’
Crying shame
Bear in mind the figures are before lockdowns and months of lost learning. Imagine the impact on children already lagging behind in the literacy stakes.
I find it shocking and so very sad. A crying shame. I wish I could wave a magic wand and bestow the ability to read and write on everyone immediately. That sort of thing only happens in fairy stories, but what I can do is help in a small way. I’m a reader volunteer with a national literacy charity which means I go into a local primary school and help children on a one-to-one basis to catch-up on reading skills, to help them conquer their fears and – hopefully – to foster a love of words.
I volunteer with Coram Beanstalk, but there are other literacy charities and thousands of people like me across the UK. I’d urge anyone who’s passionate about the subject to get involved.
Coram Beanstalk provides excellent training, expert guidance and big boxes of goodies: a selection of some of the best children’s books on the market.
Covid-19 restrictions have led to a temporary suspension of school sessions but when I work with a child, I can see instantly when they ‘get’ something and the word-penny drops. They lift their head, a broad smile in place, a spark in their eyes. Their joy and sense of achievement is entirely mutual and worth more than I can say.
It’s often said that a love of reading is the greatest gift you can give a child. My father gave me that gift. He died when I was eight years old but left a legacy that lasts a lifetime.
Reading matters.
Just ask Eunice.
Feeling inspired? Here’s where you can learn more:
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