A Simple, but sad truth from Jeanette Winterson:
I am here because of books. One of the reasons I am here is because I read Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, aged 16, at the second of being chucked out of the house. Camus is perfect for young people because he is all ardour and belief - his quest to believe in nothing lands him back at believing in each person's spirited defiance against the numbing operations of a machine-world.
Why is Labour intent on turning education into a machine-world instead of a journey into life?
Already, in English literature, kids are not required to read the whole of a text. They are led to believe by their weary and worn-out teachers that a book is not worth reading all the way through. You can spend hours on Facebook, but not Middlemarch?
Hermann Hesse, who is also off the syllabus, wrote a strange and prophetic book, The Glass Bead Game, about a future world where society has become utterly divided into those who are initiated into the mysteries of the game, and the masses who are not.
Reading is a cheap and democratic way of revealing the human mind to itself - all you need is someone to teach you to read and, after that, some books. Why are we turning literature into a new mystery? Why are we saying to millions of kids: “This is not for you?” I'll tell you why, because the sceptics at the altar don't believe a word of this. Their message is clear - literature is of no value to the masses.
The only thing left to say after that is to recognize that we live in a scary and decaying world.
