Reading is a habit that we can’t afford to lose

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IF YOU are thinking of giving children books as a Christmas present this year, brace yourself for faces crumpled with disappointment when they rip the paper off and discover that those hard edges do not belong to a CD or video game.

If the latest Progress In International Reading survey is right, a book is about as welcome to a Scottish child as a bulging folder marked "extra homework". Our children, it found, find reading boring, do less of it at home, and enjoy it less than they did five years ago.

Our literacy level is plummeting. Among 45 countries, Scotland has now slipped from 14th to 26th position.

The survey also came up with one other terrifying statistic: 37% of our 10-year-olds spend more than three hours a day playing computer games, much longer than their peers elsewhere. Bear in mind that according to another study reported in the Journal Of Obesity, the average 5 to 15-year-old also watches over two-and-a-half hours television each night.

You can see why they barely have a minute left to pick up a book.

The methodology of such surveys is always up for dispute, but however imperfect, these snapshots do capture an unwelcome truth.

We are breeding a nation of semi-literate computer nerds and anoraks who would only recognise Robert Louis Stevenson if he had an entry on Facebook, a nation of couch potatoes who would only be persuaded to take an interest in Treasure Island if it was featured on A Place In The Sun.


This has happened because we swallowed the sales pitch of the technocrats who told us first that TV, and then computers, were progressive, modern educational tools that would engage children who might otherwise be turned off by old school methods.

Middle-class parents - always a lucrative market to target - were encouraged to believe that they would be depriving their children if they allowed them to be "internet illiterate". What a joke.

What we actually needed was red flashing warnings on TVs and computers that read: "Caution: excessive, extended use of this product may stunt your intellectual and cultural development."

As a child, I considered my father, a teacher, as wildly unreasonable and embarrassingly eccentric for refusing to allow a TV in the house. His contention, quite simply, was that it would stop us reading books. He was right. Now that affluent households are stiff with plasma screens, consoles and monitors, we have whole generations who barely read.

Obviously, computer competency is a key skill for many of today's adults, but when should it be introduced? The hugely sensible approach taken by Rudolf Steiner schools is that computers only become useful in the teen years once children have mastered fundamental, time-honoured ways of discovering information and learning, such as practical experiments and books.

This week there was news coverage of a scheme to flood Nigerian schools with £100 computers in the name of progress and development. The education minister remained, quite correctly, unimpressed. Why computers, he asked, when many of his schools still didn't have books, desks or toilets.

Mention literacy, of course, and you have the Tories jumping up, attacking the government's reading strategy. They bang on about re-introducing synthetic phonics, and some progress has indeed been made using this traditional "sounding out" method in West Dunbartonshire and Clackmannanshire.

But phonics is not the whole answer because, in English, there are so many exceptions to the rules. And David Cameron's demand that every child should be able to read by the age of six is just an opportunistic stick with which to beat the government, not to mention misguided.

In Scandinavia, children are not taught to read until they are at least six years old. By then they are ready to learn and do so faster, without all the anxiety that surrounds reading in the UK.

Almost as worrying as the 20% of 11-year-olds who are illiterate, is the number of literate teenagers who actively choose to read as little as possible. Many of them have come to hate English as a subject because they associate it with term after tedious term spent ponderously picking apart one poem, one book, one play.

The excitement that used to come from being encouraged to read widely and prolifically, and the flexibility to select a range of books that interests you, is being edged out of the English curriculum.

And so the reading deficit grows. Book shops close and library borrowings keep dropping. Any realistic editor nowadays recognises that it is an uphill struggle to get people to read the longer, denser articles that used to run routinely. This is why so much of what we now read is broken up with fact boxes, 10 bests, top tips and celebrity pics.

We are slowly losing that civilising regular reading habit, and our habituation to quick-fix, truncated information, gained from TV and computers, is in danger of leaving us with the attention span of a flea.

In fact, if you have persevered to the end of this article, then give yourself a pat on the back. On present trends, you are one of a dying breed.

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:salamext:

In fact, if you have persevered to the end of this article, then give yourself a pat on the back. On present trends, you are one of a dying breed.

*pats myself on the back* lol Jazaak Allaah Khayr :D

I love reading!!! Although listening is alright as well :D

[czgibson]

Greetings,

It's a real shame that many kids don't like reading. It's also a shame that many parents don't like reading, and therefore don't spend much time reading to/with their kids from an early age. If a child's mind is regularly allowed to explore the imaginative worlds that reading offers during their development, the chances are they will be much more intellectually able when they grow up.

Having said that, one thing the article doesn't mention is Harry Potter. The number of children who have become interested in reading as a direct result of those books is truly impressive. It still needs to increase, but it's impressive nonetheless. I was working in a bookshop the day Harry Potter #4 came out, and I've never seen anything like it!

Peace

[Isambard]

I dont get it either. Its not like there is a wealth of interesting television programs, movies, or video games out there. You could watch/play them all in 2-3 yrs.

Books have had alot more time to collect interesting stories. I think its all a matter of finding a book that speaks to the person.

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[wizra]

Collected by Ibn 'Abd al-Barr in 'Jami' Bayan al-'Ilm wa Fadlih,' the chapter titled: 'The Virtue of Looking Through Books and the Praiseworthiness of Tending to Them':

2414: Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad bin Isma'il al-Bukhari was asked:

"What is it that strengthens one's memory?"

He replied: "Constantly looking through books."


2415: Ahmad bin Abi 'Imran said:

"I was with Abu Ayyub Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Shuja', and he was staying in his house. So, he sent one of his sons to Abu 'Abdillah bin al-A'rabi to invite him over.

The boy returned, saying: "I asked him this, and he said to me: "I am with a group, and when I am done being taught by them, I will be over," and I did not see a single person at his house. Rather, he had in front of him books that he was looking through. He would look in this book for some time, and then look in another book for some time."

Shortly thereafter, he arrived. So, Abu Ayyub said to him: "O Abu 'Abdillah! Glory be to Allah, the Mighty! You stayed behind and prevented us from your presence, and my son said that he did not see anyone with you, and that you said you were with a group, and that you would come as soon as you were done being taught by them!"

So, Ibn al-A'rabi said:

We have company who sit with us and do not bore us * Loyal ones who can be trusted while they are present or away;

They benefit us from their knowledge of what happened in the past * And intelligence, manners, and opinions that are correct;

With no fear of conflicts or bad companionship * And one does not fear from their tongue or hand;

So, if you say that they are dead: nay! You are a liar * And if you say they are alive, you are not far from the truth...

Translator's note: He did not lie, as he was referring to his books as his companions, and this is from the ma'arid (metaphoric speech) that do not count as lies, as was narrated authentically from 'Imran bin Husayn, 'Umar bin al-Khattab, and Ibn 'Abbas.


2416: It was said to Abi al-'Abbas Ahmad bin Yahya (Tha'lab):

"The people have greatly missed you. If only you could leave your house for just a bit and show yourself to the people so that they could benefit from you, and you could benefit from them."

So, he stayed silent for an hour, and said:

If we accompanied the kings, they would act arrogantly with us * And would belittle the rights of those they were accompanying;

Or if we accompanied the merchants, we would become sorrowful * And would become mere counters of money;

So, we remained in our homes, extracting knowledge * And filling with it the stomachs of these pages...
ِ

2419: From what was memorized in the past:

What a great speaker and companion the book is! * You can seclude yourself with it if your friends bore you;

It does not reveal your secrets, and is not arrogant * And you can gain from it wisdom and uprightness...


2420: Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Ahmad recited to me:

And the sweetest that a youth can desire after piety * Is knowledge that is beautified for him to seek it;

And for every seeker, there is a pleasure that he desires * And the pleasure of the scholar is his books...


2421: And he asked me to add to the above, and I immediately followed up with this in his presence:

The book relieves the concerns of its reader * And when he reads, his exhaustion disappears;

What a great companion it is if you seclude yourself with it * You do not fear it plotting against you, or causing commotion...


2424: Abu 'Amr bin al-'Ala' said:

"I never entered upon a man or passed by his door - seeing him with a book in his hand, and his companion doing nothing - except that I judged him to be the more intelligent one."


2425: 'Abdullah bin 'Abd al-'Aziz bin 'Umar bin 'Abd al-'Aziz said:

"I never saw a better admonisher than the grave, or anything more satisfying than a book, or anything safer than lack of socialization."


2426: al-Hasan al-Lu'lu'i said:

"Forty years of my life have passed in which I never awoke or went to sleep except that a book was resting on my chest."

Source: http://talk.islamicnetwork.com/showthread.php?p=125959

[Kittygyal]

Salamualikum.

I don't like readin just books like you know Roal Dhal or them kinda books but lurveeeeeee reading about ma deen and about long articles and stuff like at

Ma'assalama