There can be no substitute for reading

May 13, 2017 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Books are considered the gateway to the world, but inexplicably, people are not reading these days, choosing instead to sit glued to television screens.
Once upon a time, as they always say in the lead up to a story, people bought books for their children as gifts, and the recipients often went on to do well later in life. Books are being replaced by video games which teach nothing but dexterity skills.
The various electronic stores record fantastic sales; the bookstores hardly see any purchases. It 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 creative ability – sometimes taking us to places we created in our minds with such brilliance that we could actually describe these places.
Reading is fundamental. The evidence is clear that children who read are bound to do well. They develop a keen sense of reasoning, and in so doing, they are often able to solve problems more efficiently. They are also 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, 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, To Sir with Love, and many of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.
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 in effect is gone. There is no opportunity to recapitulate.
Some writers have also made millions of dollars because of an audience that always wants to use the mind to create images of places and conditions. A classic case was the Harry Potter series. There was always a movie in the making, but the avid reader refused 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.