STUDENTS till the higher secondary level of education today do not know anything about newspaper reading. For this they have no fault of their own. Schools and colleges have knowingly turned insular against promoting the habit of newspaper reading.

In these institutions, libraries, provided there is one on the premises, appear to be more like archaeological sites. Actually, the rat race of marks and grades has turned our students into educational robots thatare programmed to focus on nothing but marks and grades.

It is an awfully deplorable act that even the chains of elite schools and colleges do not provide learners with the opportunity to read newspapers regularly. The plight of public-sector educational institutions is really nothing to write home about.

The fallout of all this is stereotyped ideas and incoherent conceptual analysis, especially in essay writing, as was noted in the Central Superior Services (CSS) 2020 annual report. To nurture the attitude required for acing the CSS exam, newspaper reading must start at an early age.

Given the question paper pattern wherein higher weightage is reserved for objective and short questions at secondary and higher secondary levels, students at later stages fail to maintain cohesion and coherence of ideas bestowed upon by open-ended study questions. A sine qua non for essay writing is to master the art of cohesion and coherence in description.

Reading of editorials and opinion pieces in a newspaper can surely enable the students to achieve the essential standards of essay writing like conceptual clarity, research-based knowledge of the subject, and the argument based on logical reasoning.

Libraries have to be made functional in educational institutions, and the availability of newspapers therein, and access to them must be ensured by all.

In the country’s rural areas, the lack of expertise among the majority to navigate the digital version of a newspaper also affects newspaper reading habits. People do go to public libraries in small cities and towns, but the traditional paper version, the hard copy, is often not available for the day owing to issues within the distribution network.

Newspaper organisations may also devise ways to make possible direct interaction between their writers and readers. This can be achieved by having a Q&A segment in the space reserved for the letters to the editor column.

M. Nadeem Nadir
Kot Ali Garh

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2023