Formar Leitores para Ler o Mundo - Leitura Gulbenkian - Fundação ...

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And she quotes both a UNESCO website, which defines literacy as «skills…
that allow one to function competently in society…» and encourages book
reading, and quotes S. Fischer, A History of Reading (London: Reaktion,
2003): «Of course, only those societies will best succeed that encourage
and support a legitimate “culture of reading”, in particular the respect
and love of books» (Yates 2004: II, 762; and see Gamble and Yates 2008).
And so we move from functional literacy to the literate act of reading,
which has many liberal-humanist supporters, for example, Aidan
Chambers:
Because book-writing, by which I mean literary writing, is the best means
by which we express what is innermost, and because book-reading leaves the
entire act of interpretation to the reader’s inner self, we not only come intimately
closer to the consciousness of another person than is possible in any
other way but are also engaged with our own consciousness more intricately
and more actively than by any other means. This is why we so often feel,
when we have read a great book, a book that matters to us, that we have
grown, that we are more aware of some aspect of our self, of other people,
of life itself, than we were before…
To put it like this is, of course, to make a religious statement. (Chambers
2001: 27)
But not only a religious statement. Less poetic commentators assert their
faith in the virtues of reading «real books» as opposed to «basal readers».
The assumptions are that basal readers lead to «unnatural» behaviours in
reading, being «readerly» texts for the «passive» reader, as opposed to
«writerly» texts for the active reader, while it is also assumed that the latter
is more rewarding and consequently leads to «better» reading. Thus
Margaret Meek:
The authors who exploit their art, and the illustrators who make pictures
with secrets, link what children know, partly know, and are learning about
the world, to ways of presenting the world in books… Children who
encounter such books learn many lessons that are hidden forever from those
who move directly from the reading scheme to the worksheet.
Compare the textual variety of children’s picture books with that of reading
schemes. You will see how the interactions made possible by skilled artists
and writers far outweigh what can be learned from books made up by those
who offer readers no experiment, no challenge, no real help… What texts
teach is a process of discovery for readers, not a programme of instruction
for teachers. (Meek 1988/2008: 47)
And Lawrence R. Sipe, speaking of using literature to enhance literacy:
[Literature] ...actually expands our view of what literacy is. This... includes
literary understanding as an integral part of literate behaviour. Children
with developed literary understanding are alive to the force and power of
multiple interpretations of what they read and know how to engage in a
critical exchange of views with their peers. They are children who know how
to pleasurably surrender to the power of the text...while also using their
analytical skill to heighten their pleasure. They are children who know that
literature can be an informing and transforming force in their lives... (Sipe
1997: 104; and see Elkin 2006, and Meek 1993)
Of course, there are three obvious objections to these rousing but slightly
optimistic views. The first is that the form of text has nothing to do
with literary status; the second is that, objectively, basal texts are just as
complex linguistically as any others; and the third is that we cannot
account for what the readers do with texts – what meanings or readings
are made. But we are dealing with common perceptions, and what seems,
educationally, to be a decreasing sensitivity to surface textures.
Certain sorts of books, then, are inherently valued; and texts have
changed. But this must be taken in the context that we are living at the
most exciting period of change in the history of reading and information
transfer. The way in which children access information has changed
almost beyond recognition, and, more importantly, the way they assemble
and perceive narrative has changed. «Mainstream» texts have responded
to all these influences by, in effect, regressing – essentially from a
19th-century style to an 18th-century style: from inner to outer, from
nuanced to direct, from implied to stated, and from showing to telling.
To support this thesis fully would require extensive, highly complex analyses,
which are beyond the scope of this paper. The brief analyses of examples
here are, of course, open to the charge of being unrepresentative,
and the analytic technique requires another kind of regression – to an
unfashionable stylistic analysis – one of the tenets of which is that texts
are holistic: a small sample contains the seeds of all the rest.
The first example is from a much reviled author, infamous for her supposed
simplicity: critical interest is in inverse proportion to her popularity
(she is probably the highest-selling English-language author ever). This
is Enid Blyton, from a series-book, Five Go Down to the Sea (1953/1982: 21):
It was about five o’clock and a very lovely evening. They met nobody at all, not
even a slow old farm cart. It was even too hot for the birds to sing. No wind
blew. There seemed a curious silence and loneliness everywhere. Miles and miles
of countryside, set with cornfields, pasture land, tall hedges and glimpses of
winding lanes; heather was out on some of the hills, blazing purple in the sun;
and, gleaming in the distance, was the dark blue brilliance of the sea...
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