1st October 2019

I actually don't blame the educational system at all, I blame the television. I don't think it's a bogey and I don't think it's wicked, I just think purely practically it is much simpler for a child to come home from school tired and turn it on, and be given—what I've already said—what every human being needs, a narrative, to be given a few bright colors, to be given a bit of music, a bit of language. My generation got all that out of books and we got all sorts of other things while we were getting that, they can get that out of the television, and therefore the book becomes a bit more of an effort for them. And of course this is producing illiteracy. ● A. S. Byatt — Desert Island Discs, 1991