Editorial comment – Developing the reading habit

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Minister for Education Premila Kumar. Picture: FILE

Just the other day, Education Minister Premila Kumar said parents were rarely taking the time to read with their children.

She said this at the launch of 10 books on oceans and inclusive climate action which will be available in English, iTaukei and the Fiji Hindi languages.

Parental involvement, she said, was a critical part of a child’s development.

“We have seen that the children of this era, they grow with little devices put next to their ears to hear the various rhymes or, it is turned on for them to have a look at some of the illustrations or poems or lullabies just to see and watch,” she said.

“And that’s how they grow up with these devices.”

Gone were the days, she said, when parents had to read a book – or the children had to read a book.

“Parents had to sign off saying that yes, my child has read a book and that particular form had to go to school and the teachers would cite those forms and then make the child write a paragraph of what he or she has read. We don’t see that happening around us.”

Now that we are embracing new technology, questions will no doubt be raised about the challenges many parents and guardians face. So how do we change the trend?

As the minister pointed out, how do we change that and get parents and particularly Year One to Year Three students, including early childhood education teachers to encourage students to read?

Books, the minister said, were catalysts to drive a child’s creativity and imagination.

So let’s consider how much reading may assist in the development of vocabulary for instance, pronunciation, discovering new words, understanding and appreciating meanings of words, developing creativity and imagination, critical thinking, improving memory, perhaps improve analytical thinking and confidence, improve writing skills, and there is the added bit about being able to discover new places, and travel to faraway lands through books, and appreciate culture and tradition for starters.

Our challenge though is to appreciate all these factors as parents and guardians first.

The next step then is to nurture a sense of ownership of the reading habit, and passing this down to our children.

In a world that has embraced the digital divide, it is so much easier to simply give our children a mobile gadget, than it is to get them to read a book. But change is important though.

That must start from within us. And it must start from the homefront!

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