I don’t intend to go on about the Brit Writers Awards any more after this. Thanks largely to <a href="http://howpublishingreallyworks.com" target="_blank">the indomitable Jane Smith</a> there’s enough information out there already for the informed to make up their own minds about this organisation.

However, there’s one claim made by the BWA which really does need to be highlighted, since if it’s correct – and I’ve no reason to believe it isn’t – it does show how utterly bonkers the ‘everyone-can-be-a-writer’ bandwagon has become.

It’s this: <a href="http://www.britwriters.co.uk/schools.html" target="_blank">according to the BWA website</a> ‘over 400,000 children are now involved from Schools across the UK in the Brit Writers Creative Writing Programme for Schools.’

Poor mites, deluded into thinking they could be the next Terry Pratchett. For pity’s sake… why?

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I’m all for education, so long as it’s grounded in the real world.

According to that excellent organisation the National Literacy Trust <a href="http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/about" target="_blank">one in six adults in Britain struggles with reading and writing</a>. The NLT is a serious body, well-researched, with opinions based on sound statistics. As its director Jonathan Douglas says <a href="http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/policy/nlt_policy/2602_rising_to_the_literacy_challenge_the_conservative_party_conference" target="_blank">here, in a speech to a fringe debate at the recent Conservative Party conference</a>, standards in literacy have actually fallen over the past decade. At that same event was Miriam Gross, onetime literary editor of the <em>Daily Telegraph </em>and author of a paper on illiteracy for the Centre for Policy Studies. You can <a href="http://www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/why%20can't%20they%20read.pdf" target="_blank">find that illuminating document here</a>. It includes the shocking revelation that a million people in London cannot read. More than a third of children leaving London state primary schools still have reading difficulties <em>and five per cent can hardly read at all</em>.

Great, you might think. Let’s teach them words are fun by letting them make up stories. Let’s <em>encourage their creativity.</em>

Well, no actually. Here’s something Miriam Gross said at that fringe event, a theme she develops at length and very convincingly in her paper: ‘poor literacy standards (were) a “direct result” of the prescription of a “child-led” approach to learning in schools, and a lack of focus when teaching the basics.’

Child-led meaning ‘let’s have fun first and hope they pick up something along the way. Let’s be <em>creative.’</em>

Language is a complex system for explaining and communicating complex ideas between complex beings. To master it you need to know its rules and conventions. The only way you can learn them is by being taught in a systematic and organised way, and crucially being told when you get things right and when you get them wrong.

Does inventing stories have a place in that?  Yes, but not much of a one. Storytelling is a by-product of a more fundamental process.  Human beings need to read and write because these are basic skills without which we stand little chance of getting decent jobs, proper health care, and enjoying our lives as much as we should. Being able to read fiction is a part of that but let me put up my hand here: it’s not a big part. And being able to <em>write</em> fiction is an even smaller subset of that.

Ah, you may object, but shouldn’t we encourage ‘creativity’? Well yes, I guess, but let’s not define it so disingenuously. It’s cruel and delusional to pretend that everyone has the talent for some creative art inside them. I can’t draw or sing and I used to play a couple of musical instruments rather badly. No amount of teaching was going to change that. Nor do I feel in any way cheated since I can focus on enjoying art and music instead of wondering why I can’t hope to emulate what I see and hear.

Millions of people are creative every day and don’t even realise it. Doctors who diagnose an illness, nurses who see a worried patient and make them feel comfortable. I’ve watched a plumber scratch his head over our weird central heating system and come up with a highly creative solution to make it work. Police officers need their intelligence and imagination to go about their daily lives and politicians positively revel in creativity, good and bad, all the time. And what about a cab driver looking at the London traffic and wondering how to get from A to B?

True, it’s not the same as the blank canvas creativity of an artist or writer. But it’s still a challenge to the human intellect. And not everyone can do what I do, any more than I could dream of being a physician or a plumber. Do they envy me? Possibly, but then they probably have a very fanciful view of what writers do. This is a job like any other, a precarious form of self-employment that suits only a few.

There's also the matter of social good. Artists are good for the world but we should have no illusions about the value of our skills when the going gets tough. How many times have you heard an announcement over the PA system, 'We have an emergency here -- is there a writer in the house?'

Indulging 400,000 kids by feeding them ‘creativity’ instead of real teaching seems to me just one more dreary, depressing example of today’s faux-celeb X-Factor culture, a demeaning frame of mind which attempts to divide the world into the successful – those with their fifteen minutes of fame next to Simon Cowell – and the dreary jobsworths who keep the wheels turning. Schoolchildren deserve better than that.

And if one of them does turn into a ‘real’ writer at the end of it then I can guarantee this: they would have got there anyway, without such daft schemes. Writers really are born to some extent, like it or not. Yes, they require something to complete the transition along the way, but in the first instance it will come from inside.

As a matter of fact Miriam Gross does suggest at the end of the paper that some kind of prize could be a good idea. But one that awards literacy and results in a substantial cash award to be spent at the discretion of the head teacher of the winning school.

Good idea that. My are we short of them right now.