One frequently hears the general lament at homes and schools about the fall in the book reading habit in children. The concern of parents and teachers is genuine as one sees increasing use of digital platform, internet, computers and mobile among the kids. Therein lies the irony of the situation as it is the parents and institutions that need to play a vital role in inculcating and preserving reading habit among children.
This aspect was the highlight of the findings of the first-ever Kids & Family Reading Report, India edition by Scholastic India which was released recently. The national survey of Indian children aged 6-17 years and their parents plus parents of children aged 0-5 aimed at exploring attitudes and behaviour around reading books for fun. “This report looks at the state of reading and focuses on providing simple, actionable solutions that every parent or teacher can implement to help every child, at every age, love to read,” explains Neeraj Jain, Managing Director, Scholastic India.
Highlighting the huge role played by parents in seeding the love for reading, the reports states that one of the most powerful predictors of reading frequency in children aged 6-17 is being read to by parents five to seven days a week. Agreeing to this, Parul Gupta, language skills coach says, she was drawn to books because of stories narrated to her. She did the same for her 16-year-old daughter. Stressing on the parents’ role, Parul says: “Early exposure of children to books is necessary. For my child I started by showing her picture books on fruits, animals, flowers, vegetables, etc and later read small illustrated stories. Pictures greatly help in drawing initial attention and interest.” By eight, her daughter took to reading independently. “We still continue to discussion about books including the Harry Potter series. In fact I read John Green and Veronica Roth books on my daughter’s recommendation. Like me books are now her lifetime friends.”
In fact many well known authors too attribute their success to storytelling sessions and early encouragement received to read. Says Ashwin Sanghi, the best-selling author, “I attribute 90 per cent of my success to my maternal grandfather, Ramprasad Gupta for narrating several tales to me and my maternal granduncle Ramgopal Gupta for gifting me books on all genres and making him write about them.” Similarly, Bhakti Mathur writer of children’s Amma Tell Me series recalls how her mother’s reading aloud stories including those by Dr. Seuss and narration of tales from Ramayan and Mahabharat by their male help at home, influenced her writing. Preeti Shenoy whose latest novel “It’s All In The Planets”just hit the shelves credits her father for instilling the habit of reading. “Moving from one place to other, we discarded many things but never our book collection which kept growing over the years,” she says.
Pointing at the role of parents and educators to encourage reading for fun among kids, Jain comments: “There are clear indicators of things we can do. These include start reading to children from birth and keep going, be a reading role model for children, and create independent reading time for children during the school day.”
The survey shows that reading in school encourages frequent reading with 72 per cent children expressing positive feelings about independent reading time at school and more than 45 per cent counting it as their favourite time of the school day. Though not found in all the institutions, there are instances of a number of schools adopting this approach. In Amity International School, Gurgaon, besides the main library every class has its own library housing as many books as the students in the class. “These can be read in the school during free time or at home,” informs Anshu Arora, the principal of the school. Accepting schools’ role promoting reading, she says her school encourages children to contribute to the in-house weekly newspaper Global Times. “It is a great platform for promoting reading as well as writing skills.” The school has also allocated 30 minutes every week for Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) wherein everyone in the school from the faculty to administrative staff to students, reads as per their wish.
Housing a main library and separate class libraries, Bluebells International School in South Delhi, holds regular book discussion sessions for students besides taking them for book launches events and other libraries. The school also holds a annual book week event. Elaborating on the need to make books relevant to presents, Meenakshi Bana, the head of the school’s English department says: “In order to make the discourses contemporary we take different literary works and relate them to present. For example we selected George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’ and ‘I am Malala’ to focus on how woman can bring about changes. Likewise we compare Shakespeare’s sonnets with Mirza Ghalib’s poetry. Recently discussing Thomas Hardy’s ‘Far From Madding Crowd’, we linked the problems farmers faced during those times to the farmers suicides of today. This is essential required to create and sustain interest among students.”
Incidentally, both Arora and Bana, as mothers adopted similar methods at home to trigger an interest in reading among their children. “Reading aloud to my son and daughter I would ensuring they saw me reading thereby becoming a role model for them,” says Arora. Bana too did the same. “I made my daughter who was more inclined to films watch autobiographical ones to inspire her to read about the personalities. On viewing BBC film Miss Potter she quickly moved to read the works of Beatrice Potter.”
That reading should not become a burden comes out clearly in the survey as its finding points out that 71 per cent of kids were currently reading a book for fun. According to Parul, it is vital to ensure that at home and school, children be allowed to choose what they want to read. “The moment we prescribe the children will proscribe. In fact institutions which allocate marks for reading make the pleasure activity at par with academics thereby making it a burden for kids making them develop a lifelong hatred for reading.” Concurring with her, Bana feels “at no point should reading be devoid of joy. The moment it happens then reading becomes a drag.” The survey found humour was a favourite among all age groups specially those between 6-8 while the ones in 9-11 age group preferred true stories, the 12-14 liked ones which were a little scary and 15 to 17 wanted tales that allowed them to forget the real life.
In the present age dominated by technology the age-old source of recreation, reading faces intense competition for time from screen. Spending more time glued to screen, the survey found 85 per cent parents of kids between 6-17 wishing that their children would do more activities. Pointing that this has led to reduced attention span, Bana points out that there is definite lack of reflection about what is read. “Reading books whether in printed or electronic forces the reader to ponder and ignites imagination. This is missing when one watches a movie or a serial wherein the viewer is a passive.” Concurring with her, Shymala, mother of two boys aged 14 and 10 feels a concerted attempt on the part of parents must be made to wean away kids from screen. “Organising a lending library and book reading and storytelling sessions at the community level are very effective. The groups activities always lures children and their complete attention. There are instances of such events being held by housing societies in basement or garages.”
What clearly emerges from the Scholastic survey and the views of parents and teachers is to start the habit of reading among kids early on and sustained it through individual and group efforts. Emphasising on this, Arora comments: “Children hooked to books seldom become screen or net addicts. Their shift in focus is temporary because a book lover remains one throughout life.”
