Correcting the plight of the illiterate

Sep 23, 2010 Editorial

Reading is one of the greatest joys in the world. Reading takes people away from the drudgery of their daily lives by allowing an escape into the pages of the book and cause people to travel to unheard of places. It allows for relaxation; it eases pain by providing a distraction and above all it broadens knowledge.
Many people have learnt about peoples in other countries; they have learnt of places to the extent that they experience a sense of déjà vu when they actually visit the places. Through reading people see the world through the eyes of others.
Those who can decipher the hieroglyphics that form words on a printed page do not know what a gift that is. The illiterate merely see squiggly things and they become amazed when a good reader transforms those squiggly things into mental images that are often long-lasting.
A few decades ago when education was not compulsory for women one could understand illiteracy among young women. However, when the government decided that there must be compulsory education that situation changed although there were two tiers.
Girls were compelled to go to school until fourteen years of age while men were compelled to go until they were sixteen. This was later modified when the issue of equality between boys and girls was legalized. They all must attend school until sixteen.
Today, girls seem to have made the most use of the right to go to school. The examination results tell a most interesting story.
But all this could be even better if there is a focus on reading. Some of us who could read are unaware of when we started to and what were the tools that went into teaching us to understand the hieroglyphics on the printed page. It comes so naturally to us.
It is therefore with some disgust that we find that the number of illiterates is growing. This is because the teachers simply do not set about teaching reading to the very young children. We know that children parrot the alphabet but little else. We also know that the Education Ministry literally dumps books into the schools with the hope that the children would be enticed to read. This seems not to be the case because the books simply remain in the cupboards largely undistributed.
Today, the Education Ministry says that it is going to reintroduce reading as a special subject. The days when teachers had children standing at the head of the class and reading to his or her peers are going to return.
There is more to reading that just being able to wade through the books proffered for English language and English Literature. Reading is crucial to every subject area. We perform poorly because the student writing Mathematics cannot properly read the questions and therefore cannot readily deduce what needs to be done.
Similarly, in the other subject areas, unless one can read—and by extension understand what is being read—there is going to be a serious problem deciphering what the various answers should be.
But the greatest fun to reading is being able to escape into the world of fantasy.
Parents are crucial to children learning to read. There was a time when children bought books for their children and sat them on their laps and read to them until the children were able to do so for themselves.
This forced the children to want to read and invariably these children did very well later in life. They were the ones who preferred a good book to the television. They are the ones who today make for the best workers in an office and the people who deal best with the public. They are also the most understanding among the staff.
The decision by the Education Ministry to focus on reading once more may be a bit too late but we hope that it is sustained because with each illiterate the society is forced to spend a lot of money in some unnecessary areas—not least among them crime fighting.

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Correcting the plight of the illiterate

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