Once upon a time… little children were introduced to a wonderful world of adventure, charm, action, beauty and knowledge through bedtime stories read by their parents and grandparents.
Soon they were old enough to go to school, where dedicated teachers soon had them proudly learning to read and write.
From then, their desire to delve into the world of books was almost insatiable.
Also, once upon a time…TV sets began to replace books, followed by ipads, computers and another new world that replace words with pictures – all too powerfully able to distract young minds.
After all, looking at a brightly coloured screen is far less demanding of concentration, and far more entertaining, than is the slow and serious challenge of reading.
Such an important change in society was highlighted during National Book Week over the past few days.
On one end of the scale we still have a large number of illiterate or semi-literate people in our society: those who are desperate to be able to read, write and sign their own names.
And then we have the many who can read very well indeed…but don’t, because of new alternatives.
We may ask the question: do public libraries have a future? Who visits there?
Research? Easier to google than wade through book shelves looking for authoritative sources.
Leasure reading? Far better to sit in front of a DVD.
What little reading is being down today, is being done looking down at screens.
The long term effects and implications of this are yet to be felt and understood.
Attention spans are increasingly sinking (nobody wades through screen after screen, with the next online story panting in the wings), while the major content of online reading tends to be biased to entertainment.
One already sees people huddled over mobile devices in every place from restaurants to doctors’ surgeries, eager to get the latest online ‘fix’.
With every new medium or technology comes a change in the fabric of society.
The written word by its very nature is a structured, coherent result of a thoughtful process that went through many hands – from the writer to proof readers and publicists.
Reading demands comprehension.
What goes online is hasty, untested and generally emotion-laden rather than intelligence-directed.
Parents and teachers, we urge you to promote the reading of books.
There’s much more to it than meets the eye!
