From Sir Alec Clegg
Sir: I was so interested in your article on low reading standards that I asked our County Librarian how devastating the effect was on the borrowings from his library. To my astonishment he told me that despite television and the sweeping illiteracy to which your article feferred, borrowings have increased by some 17,000 per cent since I learnt to read by good old fashioned methods. He said also that, in his view, the paperback phenomenon was evidence of an enormous increase in sales, and added for good measure that issues of books to schools from libraries had increased over the last ten years from well under two million to well over 6i million.
Now I am bound to admit that if someone had told me that there were 17,000 per cent more cricket bats around than there were forty years ago, I. should assume that more people were playing cricket.
But obviously it can't be that more people are reading books because your contributor says they can't read and he would not say this without evidence, would he? So obviously one of two things is happening: either fewer and fewer people are frantically reading more and more books, or more and more people are buying and borrowing books to conceal the fact that they can't read. Isn't it interesting?
But I do agree about the examination of a somewhat lower standard than the ' 0 ' level. 1 suggest we have one of these. We could call it the Certificate of Secondary Education, couldn't we? Alec Clegg Education Officer, County Educa
tion Offices, Bond Street, Wakefield, Yorkshire
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