November 17, 2002

CONVENTIONAL wisdom has it that books make good companions while they enrich the mind and the personality of the reader. In spite of the advantages they offer, books are not known to be exactly popular in our society — the educated section which is equipped with the reading skills, of course. Given the fact that the reading habit is formed early in childhood Dawn decided to look into our children’s equations with books.

The existing impression was confirmed that children are not reading much for pleasure. Their school textbooks are their main reading material. Of the 614 children surveyed, 370 said that they read non-course books for less than three hours a week. It is quite disconcerting that 60 per cent of them do not read a book for even 30 minutes every day. If one were to note how children are glued to the television for hours on end, it is a pity that they have not been introduced to the joys of reading. Had that been done they would soon discover that books offer them more variety and entertainment than TV programmes.

Only 80 children (13 per cent) replied that they read for over one hour every day while 164 (27 per cent) read between 3-7 hours a week. Small wonder our children grow up to be non-book reading adults.

Why this aversion to reading? One reason could be the non-availability of good books for children. Those who understand English showed a relatively marked propensity to read. Obviously this has something to do with the attractive foreign books in English that are there in plenty in the bookshops, opening up a fascinating world of fantasy for children. A sizable number of children (167) said they liked to read only English books.

With a surge of enterprising publishers now bringing out Urdu books which are pretty impressive by all standards one hopes the young readers’ interest in Urdu will grow. There is much scope for publishers, for more than half the students surveyed said that if given the choice they liked to read in both languages.

There are two factors which have a direct bearing on children’s interest in books. Contrary to the general belief that television and the Internet divert children from books, we found no connection between the two. Many children who had two television sets in their homes and an Internet connection still displayed an interest in books. Others who lacked these facilities were not reading much.

Significantly we found that a preponderant majority of children (78 per cent) said they liked to discuss with others the books they had read. This confirms Katherine Mansfield’s observation that the pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Teachers, followed by parents, emerged as the ones who displayed more interest than others in the child’s reading habit. This is encouraging but the low level of interest in books indicates that teachers and parents are not playing enough of a role in encouraging children to read books. As a result, children are not discussing books amongst themselves either, as the survey confirmed. This is disappointing because peers are known to exert the greatest influence on a person. When books are not a favourite topic of conversation among children, no interest is generated in them.

Given this trend, it is not surprising that only 18 out of 614 students surveyed said they received books as gifts which apparently are not very popular items as birthday presents.

The most distressing fact to emerge from the survey was that libraries are not the main source of books for the students — less than 20 per cent said they obtained books from there. We didn’t ask in the survey but on inquiry we discovered that many of the schools, especially the government institutions, do not have libraries.

It is the school library which is crying for attention. If the education authorities were to insist on every educational institution having a library and set aside a budget for books, some interest should be created in reading. Then it must be made mandatory for every school to have a weekly library period in the timetable. Once the teachers start discussing books with their students, the children might be drawn towards reading for pleasure.

 

Survey THE objective of our survey was to assess the reading habits of children, and ascertain the factors which influence them. We tried to send in the questionnaires to 20 schools in Karachi, 10 of which use English as the medium of instruction and the remaining are using Urdu. One government school didn’t accept the questionnaires while another sent them back so poorly filled that we had to discard them. We had hoped to survey 800 children but could get back only 614 forms which were filled. Not all of them were correctly filled and therefore it was difficult to tabulate the answers. Some of the participating schools extended their full cooperation for which we are grateful. But we got the impression that some teachers were not sufficiently interested in the survey and failed to supervise it closely. Hence the incorrect entries. The following schools participated: Aisha Bawany Boys School, Aisha Bawany Girls School, Bahria College for Boys, Bahria College for Girls, Bay View Academy, Farheen Elementary School (Orangi), Foundation Public School, Government Girls Model School (Clifton), Government Boys Secondary School (Lyari), Karachi Grammar School, Mehr-i-Neem Roz (Garden Area), M. M. Usman Baloch Boys School (Lyari), Nasra School, Naunehal Academy (Orangi), St Joseph’s Convent School, St Patrick’s School, The Garage School (Clifton), Trinity School (Saddar). Of the 614 children who participated, 300 were girls. Half the students were in the 8-10 year age group and the other half were older (12-15 years of age). The children came from different income groups as could be made out from the different localities in which they lived. We tried to cover as wide a spectrum as was possible and this is evident from the participating schools. The questionnaires were in English and Urdu.— Gloria Caleb and Shazia Hasan

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