Listening to journalist and climate activist George Monbiot speaking about the future I was struck by his words. He said that consumers (something we human beings are often referred to as by companies and even our elected leaders) are powerless in the face of climate change. "We cannot consume our way out of the climate emergency" he said. It is only as citizens, people who participate, who take responsibility and ask their leaders to do the same, that we have any possibility of effecting a more positive future for ourselves, our children and for the world their children inherit. 

But who are the citizens who can make best possible future? I would argue ones who are useful and kind and ones who read. Reading and books give us pleasure in the present but they also play a part in nurturing the useful, kind and educated citizens we need for a decent future.

Useful citizens have the knowledge and understanding to approach our complex world, the people around them and their own lives with intelligence. Useful citizens who are educated and informed are less susceptible to misinformation and harm from platforms such as Facebook, Tik-Tok etc. etc. etc. 

Finnish youngsters are less impacted and suffer less harm from social media than our young people in the UK. Why? Because they learn the difference between facts and opinions in school (as year 5/6 did when studying Ancient Greece last Summer, studying Greek myths). When educated, well read youngsters read something on Facebook, they will be more sceptical than had they read it in media that have been peer reviewed and got through the editorial process in a respectable publication. Finland places high value on reading and Finns score highly in international reading tables. Here in school we emphasise quality literature including fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction way beyond English lessons and it is no accident that the school library is at the heart of the school. It is no accident we have opened a library in the entrance hall for children and adults where families can borrow and return books. Reading books takes children to places they can never visit; it helps inform an intelligent and broad worldview in a way that personal experience cannot.

Kind citizens are characterised by their empathy. Empathy goes beyond feeling sorry for someone, showing sympathy. Empathy is about seeing a situation through someone else's eyes, walking in their shoes, feeling their joy, their pain, their fears and their laughter. Through connections forged through empathy relationships are more equal, more supportive and mutually beneficial. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker makes a strong case for literature and works of fiction making us Homo Sapiens a kinder species. When writers like Charles Dickens wrote about children going up chimneys or being groomed for criminal gangs, readers saw the people they might have despised and looked down on in Victorian London with new eyes. Pinker argues that increased literacy had a lot to do with laws preventing abuses like child labour up chimneys, in factories and down mines. When we read a novel we don't see another person in the way we do if watching a film or TV, we inhabit the characters' inner world in quite a unique way. This is why, in school, in assemblies and the routines that form our social, moral, cultural and spiritual curriculum, stories and poems are a big part.

But the most important reading of all does not happen in school. It is widely acknowledged that it is the amount of reading children do outside of the school curriculum that makes the biggest difference to their success in education, life and work as adults.

This is why, as people prepare for Christmas - more than any other, a festival tied up with over consumption - I am making a plea for every child to receive a book of their own before we say goodbye to 2021.

This blog, the Archive Blogs the Friday Fables, and books below all give plenty of suggestions. A good place to start is a favourite author. Mrs R-B and I were equally excited to see that Jon Klassen had a new book out this month - the Rock from the Sky. 

Happy reading, Ms S :-)