Insights : ENTERTAINMENT IS KILLING OUR READING CULTURE

A historian once wrote: “A hundred years ago, on days when no circus was in town, people looking for entertainment had three alternatives: fulfilling biological needs, talking or reading. Those looking for information were restricted to the latter two.” Today, we are dying from too much entertainment. Our motto seems to be ‘Amuse us or we change the channel!’ No wonder our comedians are looking more well-fed with rounder faces by the day while book editors and publishers famish, simply because “we want to laugh even at a cost.” The result of our entertainment-crazy generation: the book has suffered a lethal blow from alternative sources of entertainment. I chuckled when I heard a pastor humorously tell a congregation: “How many of you have carried a copy of the Bible. Now, the Bible is not for carrying, it’s for reading!” Even those of us who carry books, it stops there: carrying either for reference or even to look important! We never complete them, cover to cover. Technologies have undone our capacities to think. Rwandans culture of reading has been ruined, if the time we spend on TV screens, playing video and computer games, is anything to go by. Recently, we just experienced the scourge of the ‘facebook’, ‘twitter’ and other social networking groups on the net. All this time could have been spent reading books. Rwandans do not like being told they do not read. But like the Prophet Jeremiah, I’ll have to tell my people the truth. Jeremiah, the Weeping Prophet, cried as he warned his people of an imminent Babylonian captive; it is a technological captivity in our case. Captivity by gizmos, gadgets and machines! There is a decline in the reading habit not only in Rwanda but the world over. Whatever books we read today, we could read many times more. Before one writes back an angry rejoinder, they should look at how many hours young people spend nowadays on ‘facebook’, surfing or in Internet, chat rooms and before TV screens. Sure, text-messaging is a form of reading but it will not promote high end literature and discourse; it is often done in shorthand, with no regards for the rules of syntax and grammar. The reason the reading culture is fading is simple and let us admit it: reading is a ‘difficult’ task. It requires one to linger and luxuriate on a phrase, to conjure up images described in complex sentences. Whereas written words force us to analyse them, critically examining connections and contradictions, TV encourages us to sit passively like vegetables and gobble down whatever is transmitted. As someone said: “The ability to read is linked to the ability to process, analyse and comprehend information. I guess that’s called thinking.” Well, TV doesn’t encourage thinking or figuring out scenes. If something on TV is complex or boring, we simply remote control, zapping any scene, exposition or argument that takes much more than a fraction of a minute to unfold. ‘Amuse us or we’ll change the channel!’ No wonder since our ability to think, reason and filter through sentences in a speech is compromised, we don’t labour to find contradictions and fallacies dished out by our politicians every day. Without oversimplifying a serious national problem, we need to start thinking seriously as a nation for we are intelligent, no doubt. We should probably start with reading a book today and thinking about every word and what it means. dedantos2002@yahoo.com

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Insights : ENTERTAINMENT IS KILLING OUR READING CULTURE