Reading a fictional story for just 10 minutes per day can help improve an individual's wellbeing and levels of creativity, Ohio State University professor of story science Angus Fletcher has argued in a recent book.
Titled "Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature", the book argues that the process of losing yourself in another world can have a powerful impact on wellbeing, creativity, and human performance.
Professor Fletcher has conducted a study of 165 medical students, which found that a three-hour literature class can lead to a decline in burnout for at least 48 hours while also boosting joy, empathy and resilience.
“Literature is the most powerful technology that human beings have ever created,” he said.
“Its great invention was to address problems we could not solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat but how to live and love; how to maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that we exist at all.”
Findings from the book have been adopted by J P Morgan, McKinsey and the US military, all of whom will look to utilise more literature in the future.
A number of schools have embraced the benefits of reading, with Phoenix Primary headteacher Sue Jones detailing in her recent contribution to The Parliamentary Review how the school places a large emphasis on it.
"Daily reading mastery is a whole-class approach to teaching reading comprehension and developing skills in summarising, word definition, skimming, scanning, retrieval, inferencing and making links between texts," she said.
"It is delivered in a five-day programme with mixed-ability paired children. SEND children, those who are new to the country and EAL children are provided with pre-reading time to support understanding. Texts are linked with foundation subjects through fiction, non-fiction and poetry, including music lyrics. The introduction of Read Write Inc. is also ensuring that all children can read and enjoy reading."
Meanwhile, Newland Schools for Girls has had to prioritise reading within its curriculum due to the number of students who arrive with English as a second language.
Headteacher Vicky Callaghan has met this challenge head on though, and has seen success in accelerating the development of students through reading.
"New to English students enter the school with very little English language, and social deprivation brings with it underdeveloped literacy skills; therefore, the main challenges we face are language and literacy," she told The Parliamentary Review.
"We see this challenge as a way in which we exhibit our best practice by accelerating the reading ability of our children, for example by using everyday words in a number of different contexts. Through doing so, we can ensure our girls have a knowledge of language that sits with their ability and continue to focus on reading throughout their school life."
