Discover the power of reading

It’s time to go back to school again!

I know lots of children complain about school, but I quite like it.

I enjoy learning new things and finding out about interesting stuff, not to mention seeing all my friends again.

We always have lots to talk about after the end-of-year break.

Sometimes there are new kids in the class and that is cool too.

This year I have signed up to do friendship bench duty – but more about that in another blog.

One of the things that really makes me happy is reading.

You can absolutely never be bored, lonely or sad (okay – sometimes you can be miserable if the story is sad) if you have a book to read.

I was unbelievably shattered to find out that many children my age cannot read.

Seriously!

They did a study and out of the 50 countries in the world that participated, South Africa has the worst statistics.

Seventy-eight per cent of our Grade Four children cannot read for meaning.

That means eight out of 10 students can read – but don’t really understand what they have just read.

Even worse, it did not matter what language they were reading.

Many of those children were reading something in their home language and still did not understand what they had just read.

The thing is… if a person cannot read, and make sense of what they are reading, how on earth can they plan to study and go further in life?

It certainly makes things very difficult, if not almost impossible.

My parents used to read to me most nights when I was smaller.

I couldn’t wait to hear the next bit of the story.

I would see the pictures in my head and imagine what the people or animals looked like.

I always used to beg for a few more pages to be read but my folks were pretty strict about only ever reading one chapter per night.

Luckily now I can read myself!

Often, parents are too busy or weary to read to their children at night.

If the children are lucky they might get to hear an audio book before they go to sleep, but sometimes they just get plonked in front of the TV instead.

TV is absolutely no substitute for reading.

While watching TV you use less brain power than you do when you are sleeping.

Make a New Year’s resolution to read more… please, people.

Sibo.