A reading parent, a reading child, a reading nation!

April, 23rd every year is a day designated to celebrate books and reading worldwide. Over the years in Rwanda this day has always gone unnoticed, but not 2011! This time around it was celebrated and over 200 school children were hosted to this event by the first lady Mrs. Jeanette Kagame herself. This initiative by the Imbuto foundation is a step in the right direction and should be highly applauded by all Rwandans. This will help us to offset the old saying that if you want to hide anything from an African put it in a book which seems to fit perfectly well with the majority of Rwandans today. One of the underlying causes of our poor reading habits is perhaps entrenched in our cultural mores because we are an oral society. Although this explanation is not convincing enough, because if we have evolved to embrace other values which were not part of our culture why haven’t we embraced the culture of reading as well? This rhetorical question might prove a hard nut to crack, but we can find a clue in why a reading culture has remained elusive to the majority of Rwandans from Steven Pinker’s own words. He said thus “Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don’t need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.” Reading is different indeed! It’s different because reading is a value/habit that is formed overtime right away from childhood through adult life. It is a long life learning activity. The words of Emilie Buchwald the award-winning children’s author confirms that a reading culture is a long life experience as she puts it “children are made readers on laps of their parent”. From this quotation by the literacy expert it’s apparent that parents have a unique opportunity to provide a nurturing and motivating atmosphere that fosters their children’s intrinsic desires to read and write in an informal setting. Consequently parents have the primary responsibility to facilitate their children’s growth as readers and writers, in order to increase their opportunity to become productive and informed citizens of the world. In addition research shows that as children’s first teachers, parents also play an important and primary role in showing to their children that reading and writing are important and worthwhile activities. Also what is unknown to most of us as parents is the fact that we should be co-teachers. Therefore as co-teachers we are supposed to track and follow up closely, the academic progress of our children beyond providing scholastic materials. So, between “business” and giving quality and solid education foundation, parents have a choice! As such as mentioned already, parents should lay the solid groundwork for their children especially when it comes to developing reading and love for books. Current research works show that children benefit from their parents reading them those stories which make them good listeners and good readers. When parents read a story, their “accompanying verbal and nonverbal behaviours convey important instructional and affective messages about reading” (Baker & Mackler, 1997). When parents read expressing enthusiasm and enjoyment while reading or discussing literature, their children build positive attitudes about reading. In fact, the motivation children have towards reading is strongly affected by the beliefs, values, attitudes, and expectations their parents have about literacy and books. I will conclude this article by once again congratulating Imbuto foundation for coming in to support and help in this noble cause of promoting and developing a reading culture amongst Rwandan children. However, given our poor reading habits which stems from our oral nature, there is a strong need for vigorous campaigns to promote reading involving parents, teachers and other players in our education sector. Books are pearls of wisdom let’s read them! Abraham Lincoln once said “the things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I haven’t read.” The author is and educationist and founder of Rwanda Book development Initiative.rwabodirwanda@yahoo.com