A letter to all lovers of learning, young and old.
Close your eyes.
Imagine you can't read.
You find yourself lost at a crossroads.
In front of you is a post, on that post are some planks that have black squiggly lines etched and painted onto them.
One is pointing left, one is pointing right, one ahead and one behind.
You can see that each squiggle is different but then, some are the same.
You don't know what they are or what they mean. Then there are some bigger ones, longer ones, curly ones - one has a dot.
You're still lost.
781 million people are illiterate.
781 million people are lost.
For those that can read they can pick up any pile of bound pages which are arranged with rows of these squiggly lines to learn about fictitious worlds. Worlds brimming and breathing with mythical creatures constructed in the imagination of those more widely travelled.
They can learn about the biology of the human body and nutrition. They can learn about birds.
For every interest that these people have, there is a pile of bound pages with squiggly lines out there that will teach them something that will enrich their minds.
Enrich their souls.
If you read a book every day for the entirety of your existence, you would read less than 3 per cent of the amount of books ever published. And that doesn't consider the amount of books that will be published in your lifetime.
So what is it about English that frightens students in the classroom?
These children that are so adamant that it's ‘the worst’, that ‘it's for losers’, that it ‘sucks.’
Is it that it's challenging? That sometimes they spell words wrong? That others are ‘better’ at it than them?
English is not always about getting it right. It's about comprehension and expression. Comprehending something is merely understanding it.
Being able to listen to a sentence, to an article, to a poem and understand it's tone, its context, it's meaning.
Expression is conveying meaning to others.
The deeper your comprehension, the clearer your expression.
It's about opening your mind up to the way you think, the way you see things but most of all, how you understand yourself.
Nothing is more powerful than communicating how you feel, confidently. Being able to stand up straight when someone asks you, 'how are you?'
Then, instead of, 'I'm fine,' you look them in the eye and say, 'I'm happy,' and watch how their natural reaction to smile with you - frees you.
The way we communicate is our language.
For us, we speak English, we listen in English, we think - in English.
The way we learn about life is through others experiences - through stories.
Each story is framed in a different style. Some people like blonde characters that need rescuing, some like a fantasy forest setting and others like crude marital jokes, but in the end, everyone loves a good story.
We listen to stories of pleasure, of passion and of pain. We share stories of suspense, of sacrifice and suspicion. We rely on the tales of others to justify our opinions and our endeavours to strive for more.
We retell them every day.
There is a story for every chapter of every life and it is our job to keep writing them to share the lessons of our times and the loves that make it all worth while.
With the skill of language you have to ability to tantalise senses and strike chords. To evoke a sense of magic within the mind of a reader and within your self. You sometimes find the answers to questions you didn’t know you were searching for.
Without the skill of language we wouldn't be who we are today. Shakespeare would never have coined the word, 'swagger,' or, 'eyeball,' or 'arch-villain.' Superman would never have have been confused with a bird and satire wouldn't exist.
We wouldn't have the cheesy poem your first love wrote you, or the lyrics to your shower song. We wouldn't have the scripts to the movies that we quote with our friends, or the recipe your mum turned into your favourite dessert. There wouldn't be legends of gods from times long gone or predictions of life forms in the future. The most magical mythopias wouldn't exist and our dreams would be nothing but darkness.
With language, at that crossroads you may still be lost, but you will have a choice to do what's best for YOU and that choice can set you free.
Without language, you would have no name.
So as long as you’re an English speaker, living and learning - don't give in and say you hate English -you just haven't found the right book.
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