Why don’t we have a reading culture?

Dear editor, I have noticed that reading books is not a favourite for many Rwandans. Admiring a book cover, finding out who wrote the book, reading a few pages, flipping more pages here and there is more like it for the average Rwandan ‘reader’. In many school libraries across the country, it is common to find books kept under lock and key by the school administration, which barely has reading programmes in their routine. Thus the children who would be great readers and probably writers are denied a chance at an early age to explore reading. If the shelves are open to students, for one reason or another, few or no students read them, partly because no one is encouraging them to explore. In the market place, the situation is not any better as these former students who used not to read have turned out to be the moneyed people, but with a poor reading culture. If we are to take the saying that a man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading, then there is cause for alarm about the knowledge and wisdom of the people in a country with a poor reading culture. So it’s a challenge to the ministry of education and other stakeholders to look into these matters. Setting up various national libraries and encouraging the young ones to have a reading culture could give a new breed of well-informed Rwandans. By a concerned Rwandan

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Why don’t we have a reading culture?