Can teachers stay away from reading?

Back to the Books

Thanks are due to the team at The Hindu - EDGE on 3rd December 2018. The piece on their website here.

Images are from the Delhi Book fair - few years ago. 

A teacher, happily away from books, is not good news either for the school management or student.

“So, what do you read?” asked I. “Sorry, I do not read; I do not have the time for it,” came the answer. The tone of the teacher was alarming. One which conveyed that the person was possibly aware but surely not concerned. Having known the person for a few months I did not exactly fall off my chair but surely slumped deeper into it. Over a period of time I realised that, as teachers go today, she was more of a norm than an exception.

Not having time is an euphemism for ‘it is not one of my priorities’ for, incidentally, all of us have equal time – 24 hours each day.

If teachers do not read, how will they be able to bring in freshness to their teaching? Will they be able to stay abreast of the developments in subjects of their interest and in education itself? Do they have a moral ground to, stand on and ask the students to read? Will they be able to engage in conversations with students including with those who end up reading? Students learn more from our actions than from our words, so, what is the message, in context of books, which we give?

Reading (lack of it) is not a recent issue. It has been on the radar for some time now. I am reminded of a conversation, about a decade ago, at Delhi. Lavkumar Khachar, the doyen of nature education in India, was asked to comment on the severity of the threat our environment faced. His response was striking: the most serious threat we face as a nation, he said, concerns not the environment, but the youth. We have raised an entire generation, today’s youth, which seldom reads. This is the gravest threat we face.

It is ironical to discuss lack of reading at a time when we publish more books than ever before and boast of close to a hundred literature festivals annually; when Jaipur hosts the largest literature festival and schools are the locations for the festivals at Hyderabad and Mussorie. Talking about children, the recently organized Bookaro, Festival of Children’s Literature, at Srinagar, was attended by more than 2,500 children while a newspaper article, ‘Children’s books are growing up’, stated that the books meant for children are finally moving beyond ‘sugar coat and censor’ and focusing on ‘contemporary issues that reflect the child’s realities’. But then we live in an age of ironies.

Back to schools, and I wonder on the number of times in a month a school management talks about books (and/or reading) with its teachers or the teachers talk about books amongst themselves or the teachers talk about books with their students. Do we have schooling paraphernalia which encourages reading? Here, of course, I do not include the books that are a part of the curriculum but those we read for pleasure. For ourselves. To quote Neil Gaiman, ‘if we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing’. 

Schools, usually, have a long list of what students should not do. Can we have an additional point on the other list – what they are encouraged to do – that of reading? Can we help create an environment where students are able to access what they want to read? In a language of their choice and not what teachers and school management prescribe based on their outlook to life and moral compass. To quote Gaiman again, ‘I do not think there is such a thing as a bad book for children’.

But then what about teachers? Many of whom do not read! Will we have to begin by creating the environment for teachers?