Reverse the trend of our inability to read

Dec 27, 2008 Editorial

Books are considered the gateway to the world but for some strange reason they are in drastically short supply. People are not reading, choosing instead to sit glued to the television screens.
Once upon a time, as they always say in the lead up to a story, people bought books for their children as Christmas gifts and those children often went on to do well later in life. Books have been replaced by video games which teach nothing but dexterity skills.
The various electronic stores recorded fantastic sales of video games and remote controlled toys this year; the bookstores hardly saw any purchases. It was as if they did not exist.
Those of us who read would know that there is nothing that broadens our horizons like books. They encourage flights of imagination, develop the creative ability, sometimes taking us to places we created in our minds with such brilliance that we could actually describe these places.
The evidence is clear that children who read are bound to do well. They develop the sense of reasoning and in so doing they are often able to solve problems. They are the children who are less likely to get into physical confrontations. They know that there is always a better way out. It is no accident that an increasing number of young people turn to a life of crime. If a survey is to be taken, one can trace this trend to the declining reading skills. The less one reads the less one can reason and the less can one express himself. It is this inability to reason that causes a person to respond in a Pavlovian way to situations. Everything is done instinctively and impulsively.
This could change drastically once we reintroduce a studied reading programme in schools. We find that there are children who can pronounce words from a printed page but when asked to explain what they have read, they appear to be incapable of doing so. This is because they really cannot read.
Some years ago, perhaps as far back as three decades, teachers would advise secondary school children to look at movies scripted from published books. Among these were, A man for all seasons, Cry the Beloved Country, many of Shakespeare’s plays including Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, and To Sir with love.
It turned out that many of the movies were adapted more for entertainment and often they differed from the books in certain aspects. Children then left with a mistaken concept of the book. Today, that trend continues to the extent that many young people would have the mistaken impression that once they have seen a movie then they understand the book. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Reading also does more for the individual. It develops an appreciation of the language. There are always new words to be learnt, new turns of phrases that succinctly capture an image, and new styles that could be incorporated in writings.
And writing is an art that only gets better when one reads. There was a time when the prevailing view was that with the advent of television and radio, the printed word would have become a thing of the past. That has not been the case simply because with the printed word an individual could go back and better understand something that might have been missed.
With the electronic media, once the word is spoken it is gone. There is no opportunity to recapitulate. Because of this some publishers are actually reporting increased circulation of newspapers.
Some writers are also making millions of dollars because of an audience that always wants to use the mind to create images of places and conditions. A classic case happens to be the Harry Potter series. There is always a movie in the making but the avid reader refuses to await the creation of the movie.
In the end those who read the book would conclude that the movie failed to live up to the expectations created by the book. There can be no substitute for reading.

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Reverse the trend of our inability to read

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