Strong reading habits need to be inculcated among primary school students urgently.

The annual study by Pratham NGO has been bandied around by all and sundry ever since it has released. The glaring find of this year’s report has been the poor reading skills among primary school students in India. The report alarmingly found that class V students couldn’t even read a class II language textbook properly. In fact, a majority of students who do well in written examination also turn out to be poor readers.

This when it is often suggested that only good reading habits make students perform better in higher studies and make them autonomous learners.

The solution is to ingrain reading activity strongly from younger classes itself. From grades III to V silent reading, loud reading, reading with spoken art components, echo-reading and reading theatre performances should be held. Also, students will pick up the skill if reading and oral testing for about 25% marks is made compulsory in primary classes

However, the ground reality is very different. No serious effort is being made in primary schools to set aside some time for reading. Whenever reports like Pratham’s are released and the pressure mounts on the government education system, it responds by introducing short-term reading campaigns but the students relapse to their non-reading status almost as soon as the project is over.

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The Pratham study revealed that excessive use of workbooks, worksheets and work-cards badly affected the reading levels of students. In fact many reasons can be attributed to the slow dying of the reading habit. The overuse of technology in urban areas, use of workbooks in semi-urban areas, emphasis on paper-pencil tests and lecture method of teaching are some of the culprits.

One can’t help but remember the words of Joseph Addison, who has rightly said, "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

Image Courtesy: qz.com

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