Flogging a dying horse? Our reading culture and our children’s.
I used to always be left speechless whenever I spent time with my nephews on visits to their home or the countless times I was left to babysit them whenever their mother’s schedule kept her away for longer hours than usual. These boys’ reading culture always worried me. In a bid not to sound hypocritical, I don’t expect a child to be citing Okot p’Bitek or Desmond Bagley at that tender stage but to want nothing at all to do with non-academic reading is a terrible seed to sow for our children and future generations. As African parents, we have to set aside the western parenting techniques and direct our children in the direction we want if they are to cope with the day to day problems in our world. Our problems as Africa are not the same as their (the West) problems. My Torts professor likes to joke that the West lives in the Disney channel mode where angrily barking at one’s child could attract a law suit while we are set in the hard less more real National Geographic mode. The rate at which the African parent is submitting the book with the television remote is a promise of doom.
Growing up, every home I visited had a book shelf. Many of these books were untouched but the shelf remained there poised like some sort of must have monument, subconsciously reminding children as young as toddlers that they held the key to many things in this life. The shelf at our home did not have many children’s books. I remember among other books it had a collection of books on communism by Fredrick Engels and Karl Marx(my father had studied in Russia so I guess this obsession sprouted there) some classics like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Children in our days asked for copies of Paul and Jane. The must haves were Lady Bird or Disney tales . Besides the colorful pages and exciting adventures these books greatly helped our language, story telling tales and tapped into our imagination. A child’s imagination is a very important part of their lives for I am one of the people that have always believed that a child’s imagination is a real determinant and contributor to their intelligence. Today’s child is groomed by Disney and Nickelodeon and those are just a lucky few. There’s a group that has grown up filling their heads with the translated versions of Indian soap operas aired on a popular local network that has kept our children’s conversations limited to which character has trapped the rich man’s son by faking a pregnancy and going ahead to kill to protect this secret. That child could also have used that same time to learn to desist from eating freebies from strangers by reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and learning from Snow White’s fate on biting the red apple from the strange old woman in the woods. The Lion King story has in it sugarcoated themes of power struggle, family drama, assassinations and even a coup d’état.
These stories we read as children were not just stories. Deep within were lessons, warnings cleverly buried by the authors to groom us and warn us that the world was full of cunning people who did not wish everyone well. All this wrapped up in a beautiful story …priceless treasure if you ask me. Let’s not groom our children to become the brainless brats we see on television who run away from home or shoot their classmates dead because their PlayStation pads have been confiscated temporarily by their parents as punishment for a wrong deed. Slowly but steadily, the shelves have been replaced by the latest PlayStation set up or cartoon channel subscriptions. Reading was so important that children who never had an interest in reading were also catered for in the forms of comic books.
I have decided to come up with an African collection of tales for our child today with lessons cautiously buried within. I got the idea for this a few days ago at the Uganda Museum library. I was talking to two colleagues. One is a famous lady who does poetry and organizes one of the country’s biggest poetry festival and awards(by the way do not miss the Babishai Niwe poetry festival running from 26th to 28th August at the Uganda Museum) and the other the library custodian of sorts. The latter told of a gentleman who had paid annual subscription for his child at the library. This child was Primary Seven pupils aged about 12.We were in shock! Much as we understood the folk’s interest in his child having a remarkable reading culture and interest I couldn’t help being astounded for the museum library is filled with books on political science and history…not folktale history but political history. You know the one punctuated with death, bloodshed, murder, corruption, politician’s dishonest demagogue and so on. A Ugandan book with stories for our children is coming right up. In the meanwhile put a pause to day long television and PlayStation for your child. Train a child to read and you’ll be surprised how much they will appreciate it when they grow up. When a child grows up looking for answers between pages of a book and innocent play with friends. We can try to control the influences on them. This produces much better citizens than the influences they pick from television series and western media.
Our poor reading culture has further been killed by digital communication. This was a point highlighted by Charles Olwenyi the Guest of Honour at the ongoing second annual East African Language and Cultural Conference going on at Makerere University Kampala. Today communication has ruled out the need to write letters and this has been replaced by the text which has further extended through social media to include other mass media formats like video and audio. Media entrepreneurs have also noticed that the masses have stayed away from informative educative news and have resorted to publishing trash and tabloids because there has been a sad realization that the only time many people are willing to read today is when they are flipping through gossip and trivia. So everyday more and more tabloids hit the streets as serious dailies close down and phase out. The people opt for passion and romance novels from the west and leave rich African tales lying on the bookshop shelves. It’s not too late to save our reading culture.
Growing up, every home I visited had a book shelf. Many of these books were untouched but the shelf remained there poised like some sort of must have monument, subconsciously reminding children as young as toddlers that they held the key to many things in this life. The shelf at our home did not have many children’s books. I remember among other books it had a collection of books on communism by Fredrick Engels and Karl Marx(my father had studied in Russia so I guess this obsession sprouted there) some classics like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Children in our days asked for copies of Paul and Jane. The must haves were Lady Bird or Disney tales . Besides the colorful pages and exciting adventures these books greatly helped our language, story telling tales and tapped into our imagination. A child’s imagination is a very important part of their lives for I am one of the people that have always believed that a child’s imagination is a real determinant and contributor to their intelligence. Today’s child is groomed by Disney and Nickelodeon and those are just a lucky few. There’s a group that has grown up filling their heads with the translated versions of Indian soap operas aired on a popular local network that has kept our children’s conversations limited to which character has trapped the rich man’s son by faking a pregnancy and going ahead to kill to protect this secret. That child could also have used that same time to learn to desist from eating freebies from strangers by reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and learning from Snow White’s fate on biting the red apple from the strange old woman in the woods. The Lion King story has in it sugarcoated themes of power struggle, family drama, assassinations and even a coup d’état.
These stories we read as children were not just stories. Deep within were lessons, warnings cleverly buried by the authors to groom us and warn us that the world was full of cunning people who did not wish everyone well. All this wrapped up in a beautiful story …priceless treasure if you ask me. Let’s not groom our children to become the brainless brats we see on television who run away from home or shoot their classmates dead because their PlayStation pads have been confiscated temporarily by their parents as punishment for a wrong deed. Slowly but steadily, the shelves have been replaced by the latest PlayStation set up or cartoon channel subscriptions. Reading was so important that children who never had an interest in reading were also catered for in the forms of comic books.
I have decided to come up with an African collection of tales for our child today with lessons cautiously buried within. I got the idea for this a few days ago at the Uganda Museum library. I was talking to two colleagues. One is a famous lady who does poetry and organizes one of the country’s biggest poetry festival and awards(by the way do not miss the Babishai Niwe poetry festival running from 26th to 28th August at the Uganda Museum) and the other the library custodian of sorts. The latter told of a gentleman who had paid annual subscription for his child at the library. This child was Primary Seven pupils aged about 12.We were in shock! Much as we understood the folk’s interest in his child having a remarkable reading culture and interest I couldn’t help being astounded for the museum library is filled with books on political science and history…not folktale history but political history. You know the one punctuated with death, bloodshed, murder, corruption, politician’s dishonest demagogue and so on. A Ugandan book with stories for our children is coming right up. In the meanwhile put a pause to day long television and PlayStation for your child. Train a child to read and you’ll be surprised how much they will appreciate it when they grow up. When a child grows up looking for answers between pages of a book and innocent play with friends. We can try to control the influences on them. This produces much better citizens than the influences they pick from television series and western media.
Our poor reading culture has further been killed by digital communication. This was a point highlighted by Charles Olwenyi the Guest of Honour at the ongoing second annual East African Language and Cultural Conference going on at Makerere University Kampala. Today communication has ruled out the need to write letters and this has been replaced by the text which has further extended through social media to include other mass media formats like video and audio. Media entrepreneurs have also noticed that the masses have stayed away from informative educative news and have resorted to publishing trash and tabloids because there has been a sad realization that the only time many people are willing to read today is when they are flipping through gossip and trivia. So everyday more and more tabloids hit the streets as serious dailies close down and phase out. The people opt for passion and romance novels from the west and leave rich African tales lying on the bookshop shelves. It’s not too late to save our reading culture.
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