General Secretary of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA), Dr. Wale Okediran, posits parents are responsible for inculcating into their children the culture of reading.
He insists parents have a huge role to play in promoting reading among their children and should not depend on teachers solely for this.
Dr. Okediran admitted Africa has a problem with its reading culture and enumerated some reasons which have been alluded to this.
According to him, the dominant reason is the fact that books are not affordable to many on the continent. “Aside from books being expensive, they are also not available. We do not have enough libraries where our people can go to read books.”
The other complaint is that there are more distractions to our children. The children are busy doing other things and focused on social media, watching television and enjoying football. They can name all the managers for the various football teams but can’t name a single African author.”
Dr. Okediran hinted parents and guardian have failed in their responsibility of introducing their children and wards to reading and writing. “It is believed that the first teacher to a child are the parents and what many parents now do is to push the children to school and expect teachers to do their (parents) work for them. Many of us started reading at an early age. We were fortunate as our parents introduced us to reading through newspapers and magazines.”
He made this known in the special edition of e.tv Ghana’s Fact Sheet show focusing on African Literature Jamboree, in commemoration of the African Union Day.
For Africa to improve its reading culture, “then all of us have a lot to do. Parents must rise up to their responsibilities as early as possible and teachers must also make sure children are exposed to a lot of reading materials.
He called on government to also make books affordable by reducing tariffs on materials used in producing books.
“The introduction of libraries in the communities and schools are important. Gov’t can’t do all on its own and we need the philanthropists to set up private libraries and MPs to set up libraries in their constituencies.”
The problems affecting reading have been enumerated “and the solutions are at our doorsteps and I believe we can resolve them,” he added.
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