Jayne Dowle: Why all the gimmicks surrounding World Book Week?

What are yours doing for World Book Week? I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been asked that since Monday, and run out of superlatives in response to proud parental Facebook posts. My children might not be spoiled in material ways, but when it comes to encouraging their creativity, we will do whatever it takes. The galleon was all Lizzie’s idea. She just lacked the City & Guilds in carpentry to build it. However, if you can’t help your children realise their dreams when they are nine years old, it’s a bit sad really.

However, at about 3am on Tuesday, I had the kind of thought you only have in the middle of the night on no sleep. Not every parent is prepared to stay up all night painting windows on to a galleon. Lizzie is lucky. What of the other children in her class? The ones who forgot to take the note home? The ones whose parents are too busy to help them put a costume together? The ones who live in homes where the budget is so tight, there’s not even a spare couple of pounds to buy some tubes of paint?

Personally, I love helping Lizzie put her crazy creations together. Not every parent does though. And I think it is very unfair of schools to put pressure on children to participate. There will always be those who are left out, who stand and watch sadly from the side-lines as the pirates and trolls parade into school.

When I put this to a teacher friend, she pointed out that such events are intended to encourage participation. From a parent’s point of view though, I’d say that the opposite is true.

However, from the children’s perspective, I suppose school life would be dull without such events to break up the term. Lizzie certainly embraces them fully. Only the other week she came home and informed us that it was “British Heart Foundation Friday” and she must go to school dressed all in red. We scrambled together an outfit and painted her face with a heart and she was happy as can be. It’s all getting a bit much though. We’re already gearing up for Red Nose Day and Children in Need. She’s even marking them off on the kitchen calendar.

And that’s when my middle of the night thoughts started turning slightly murderous. At what point in Western civilization did it become the responsibility of schoolchildren to prop up every charity and good cause on the planet? Who in the mysterious world of school has decreed that it is their moral obligation to organise charity events almost every other week? And at a particular patience-sapping bit of the galleon’s construction, I began to question why children need a demanding event simply to encourage them to pick up a book and read? Surely it is the job of schools to do this day in, day out, without resort to special weeks and gimmickry?

This is not just the moan of an over-tired parent. There’s a deeper issue beneath my whingeing. Making school fun is all very well, but surely raising awareness of the wider world should begin at home? I am happy to sit down with my children and talk about those who are far less fortunate than themselves. I don’t need Lizzie coming home with more calendar engagements than Prince Charles to point it out to me. And I am perfectly fine with helping them both to find books they are interested in, and encourage them to develop a love of literature.

I know this sounds cynical, but it strikes me that there is a certain kind of parent who is only too happy to abnegate responsibility for this kind of thing if the school is happy to take it on. And this sounds even more cynical, but I suspect that is just this kind of parent these initiatives intends to reach. Can you blame me for asking then – just what is the point? Ask any exhausted primary school teacher and they will tell you the same.

So what did I do for World Book Week? I went to the supermarket and whilst I was stood in the queue staring into space thinking about galleons, I spotted a rack of special titles promoting the event. At just £1 each. I picked out a Michael Morpurgo about animals for my son Jack and a book about – yes, pirates – for Lizzie. I took them home and pointed out that cardboard galleons are one thing, but this is the point of World Book Week – actual reading. I haven’t heard a word out of them since. And that’s the way it should be.