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Social media is fine, but

reading habits are dying

he event was being held in a Bi-literacy wherein digital literacy is im-
portion of one of the renowned parted beside serious old-style reading
The LasT book stores in Delhi. There were could be the first step in the right direction.
three authors of comparatively
Reading helps our minds to grow and, as
Word T successful books on the dais. science reveals, the mind can keep growing
Only five or six chairs were occupied in the
and making new pathways of understand-
Abdul WAsey audience. The number of attendees rose to ing even as the body ages. Charles Van Dor-
seven by end of the panel talk. Interestingly, en in his classic work How to Read a Book
both speakers and listeners were in the for- says that “The body is limited in ways that
ties or above. Only a half a dozen people the mind is not. But there is no limit to the
bothered to come to the programme de- amount of growth and development that
spite social media promotions and personal the mind can sustain. The mind does not
invites. Even the book store visitors, most of stop growing at any particular age.”
whom could be seen in its cafeteria, were In simple words, reading is to mind what
not excited to hear the authors or meet exercise is to body. With the growing age,
them. Such incidents are not rare to notice. adults too need to be mentally fit. And books
Gone are the days when the libraries may play a crucial in it. The earlier we get
and bookstores were almost always filled to involved into reading the better it will be.
capacity and one would feel em-
barrassed if someone mentions Digital addiction is
a book which a person hasn’t
read. Things have drastically shrinking memories
changed since then. Today, if
someone talks about book, par- and eroding attention
ticularly classic ones, the person span. We are slowly
is looked upon as being odd and
sometime even called crazy. becoming slaves
The truth of the day is that of technology
digital addiction is shrinking
our memories and eroding our
attention span. Fear is growing Books, according to double Pulitzer Prize
that unless we learn to unplug winner Barbara W Tuchman, are the carri-
now, we will become the slaves ers of civilisation. “Without books, history
of technology. According to a is silent, literature dumb, science crippled,
study by Microsoft, an average thought and speculation at a standstill. They
human being now has an attention span of are engines of change, windows on the
eight seconds. This is a sharp decrease from world, lighthouses erected in a sea of time,”
12 seconds in the year 2000. By the way, the she once said.
attention of a goldfish is put at nine seconds. The importance of reading needs to be
The art of reading, the fundamental skill stressed and restored among children and
which is the passport to all learning, is los- adults alike. They should be told that spend-
ing its charm fast. But it needs to be revived. ing time on something worth is never wast-
We need to start from the scratch. Capabili- ed and what’s more worth than reading a
ties of reflection, analogical understanding, book. Weaving the digital way of education
critical inquiry and empathy are devel- with the old style of studying may go a long
oped by in-depth readings. Digital reading, way in reviving the age-old learning tradi-
especially if introduced in early childhood, tion. Reading habits shall never die.
encourages skimming while discourag-
ing reflective interaction with the text. letters@tehelka.com

Tehelka / 15 march 2019 66 www.Tehelka.com