Once Upon A Time...

Being read my story is one of my very favourite childhood memories.

I was one of those lucky children who was read to every night before bed, and I never wanted the story to end. It was usually my Dad’s job: he didn’t put on funny voices or attach any bells and whistles to the task, but his love of a good story communicated itself and it wasn’t long before he had me as hooked on reading as he was himself.

When I was old enough to read my own books, I was still read a story at night: I was reading my way through the books aimed at teenagers when I was at the older end of primary school, but my Dad was introducing me to Dickens and Jane Austen and even the easier Thomas Hardy novels. I knew, starting off at ‘big school’, that reading was one of my favourite things to do. After I went upstairs to bed, I’d sneak my own book from my bedside table, open the curtains just enough to let the streetlight outside shine in, and read another chapter and another and another, until my Mum caught me and threatened to ring the council and have the streetlight taken away. I believed her, so grudgingly agreed to go to sleep.

I heard recently about a primary school in Essex where teachers are live-streaming bedtime stories for pupils at 7pm each evening. The teachers take it turn about; some of them have even dressed in pyjamas, complete with cocoa and teddy bear, to bring the event to life. People have said ‘how wonderful’. As a teacher, I find it all a bit disturbing.

First of all, I have no intention of letting my students see me in my pyjamas; any cuddly toys who have claimed membership of my family have a right to their own privacy at home. But more importantly, I remember being told, when I started teacher training, that teachers fulfilled a very important role: in loco parentis during the hours of the school day. In the place of parents. This shouldn’t mean that teachers take the place of parents 24/7/365. We should do our very best for the pupils in our charge all day, every day; but parents have a role to play as well. I learned my love of reading at home even more than I did at school. More importantly, I learned that it’s ok to be a bit different, a bit eccentric, when I was far away from the all-encompassing forest of peer pressure and conforming. My parents were busy, but I think they wanted to make time to talk to me and contribute to my growing-up. Most parents I know actively seek out their children’s company and enjoy spending time with them; more than that, they actually want to have an influence on them. Why delegate all responsibility to teachers?

Teachers are in loco parentis when we look after the pupils in our charge; we set them homework, but we don’t organise their life at home. We may even – the thought of it – have a life outside school ourselves, with families, homes, interests of our own. After years of ‘teacher bashing’ over school holidays and hometimes, and documented evidence of how much teachers work during holidays, evenings and weekends, are we to be asked to give up a little more free time and privacy, streaming stories from our bedrooms so parents don’t have to bother?

It’s easy for me to say. I’m not a parent: it just didn’t work out that way for me. People – friends, colleagues – tell me that I simply wouldn’t know about the stress and the exhaustion and the emotional upheaval, and perhaps they’re right. I can do empathy, though; I’ve worked with teenagers for 25 years, I have always had friends and relatives who have young children, I think I kind of know how it all works. I know that parents are there before teachers in their children’s lives, and will be there long after the classroom is a distant memory. Teachers matter – I wouldn’t be one if I didn’t think so – but surely they shouldn’t be doing the parent’s job as well as their own?

Yesterday, a journalist whose writing I admire wrote in the Sunday Times about the bonding experience of reading to her children, being read to in her own childhood, and the books she remembered from back then, some of which she’d shared with her own children. In particular, she was writing about Judith Kerr, who died last week, and her reaction to When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. I remember that being one of the books my Mum had to tell me to stop reading long after my bedtime: I just didn’t want to put it down.

The primary school in Essex which has experimented with teachers streaming bedtime stories has reported an increased uptake in reading, including some parents continuing the experiment by reading to their children themselves. And that is very positive. How exciting would it be, though, if parents didn’t need to have ‘reading a bedtime story’ done for them by teachers, Alexa or an iPad app, but if they made the time to bond over a book for half an hour? They might even enjoy it. They might find they’re creating lifelong memories in quite a simple way. Not every child will gain a love of reading, but surely at the very least it’s time together?

But it’s easy for me to say. Maybe I’m just another tired teacher, looking forward to my too-long holidays, not a Mum so therefore incapable of any kind of empathetic comprehension, sounding off when it’s simply none of my business? The wicked witch from the bedtime story; the malevolent fairy not invited to the christening?

Once upon a time, there was a country where everyone worked together to look after its young. The parents did their bit, the teachers did theirs. Nobody fought. Nobody cast blame. Nobody ran away from what they knew deep down they should be doing.

And they all lived happily ever after.