Books play a pivotal role in a child's growth and development by creating a rich environment for learning and imagination. Surrounding children with books nurtures their curiosity, enhances their language skills, and strengthens their cognitive abilities. Sandeep Dutt takes us through how books encourage creativity, broaden worldviews, and provide valuable life lessons, fostering a love for learning that lasts a lifetime.
Do School Libraries still attract Children?
Yes, provided they have librarians who understand what books are, and can guide children towards the right content. It is the librarian who pulls children inside a library more than the books themselves. Also, educators should inculcate the habit of reading as well; even if they don’t, educators should be found around the school campus with a book or a reading material other than the ones prescribed in the syllabus. This act will pique the curiosity of children, and who knows, the title may get picked up as well.
Teachers and principals should inculcate the habit of reading in children by reading books themselves.
Influence of Parents
Before a child is born, the mother has to have books around the house to warm the hearth. If parents ensure that the first few things that their children visually absorb are the presence of books around them, that’s when a habit of reading can be inculcated.
Sadly, an average Indian home doesn’t have books; the ones present are only in the school bag. People debate about reading a paperback/hardcover or reading on screen, but when there is no culture at all of holding a book, be it digital or otherwise, of what use are the arguments?
Reading Trajectory
Between primary and middle years, some children change schools. Options vary from boarding to international schools so that a child can get into a more progressive environment to reach the prescribed milestones and ace his/her entrance exams for future courses. One interesting thing is that children who read about diverse subjects have an upper hand in acing such exams due to better comprehension and an extensive vocabulary.
Consuming Content Today
There’s so much access to a variety of data, and given that a lot of it is stored in cloud, the neocortex doesn’t have the extra effort of keeping a tab on everything. There has been research on creating a human brain with human skills laced with technology. One can only imagine that the futuristic scenario would be pouring a book straight into the neocortex of the brain.
Yet with so much advent in technology and access to reading materials, we are not reading. Why?
It might have to do with the evolution of the human brain, and an altered attention span, adapting us to sensorial data, which makes data consumption faster than before. This also means that data absorption and thinking has also become faster than before. So today, even if we are looking at a hundred different elements on social media, every reel, video or picture would have left an impact on our brains, helping us recall some bit of it eventually.
We may find it funny today but during our times, we were not used to seeing people glued to screens all day. But for today’s generation, visual stimuli may be the way of absorbing information. Categorising anything as relevant or irrelevant information today seems unfair as what we may consider as inapt would also have a lot of thought gone behind its making. So absorption of information may happen through several mediums, be it sound, visual, print or digital. The amount of stimuli we are subjected to as of today has increased. Ultimately, the choice rests with us and how we exercise it.
Are Reading and Learning Always Correlated?
Visual stimulus is what a child is first subjected to after birth, and that’s where learning starts from. Reading comes much later. The first four years is when a child is most adaptive and recipient to what he/she sees around him/her. Once introduced to words, the cranial capacity will be limited to absorbing information in a pre-set pattern. We introduce children to what we want to see, adding our perception as well to it. Hence, when we see people not reading, it irks us; why?
What we need to understand is that learning can happen without reading as well. For instance, the tribal folk have barely read a word but their behavioural learning is massive compared to many of us with degrees and diplomas. We spoke earlier about how a parent can influence a child’s reading habit, but what if both or either parent is visually challenged or not educated at all? Books are one way of learning along with other mediums that add to the learning curve.
Yet…
Nothing has changed in 100 years. ‘People should read’ has been a mantra that we have chanted for over a century, yet we fail to realise that our hyper state of mind can achieve stillness through reading. It is a form of meditation that leads from script to imagination, and when you put a script in your mind, you connect, communicate, collaborate and create.
Access
A dearth of books and bookstores during the pre-independence era stymied the progress of bibliophiles in the country. Cut to post-independence, books were expensive, inaccessible and it took a few years for people to access pocket-friendly reading materials. Today, we have home grown authors with a robust ecosystem of publishing and reprinting stories.
But, there exists a part of India where neither teacher nor student has experienced a bus ride, leave alone an access to a library or a bookshop. How do we do any justice to their situation?
The Art of Reading
The art of reading converts the art of thinking to the art of reflection, and that in turn gets made into a blog, a video log, a podcast, or a reel. Reading does two clearly good things; it slows you down to a melody or a pace and secondly, it helps you look and use your gaze in a pinpointed manner. Reading helps you achieve a great depth of focus.
Personal Reading Journey and Recommendation
Sandeep Dutt was born into a family of bibliophiles. His grandfather owned a bookstore that was handed over to his father and mother. A post-graduate in Sanskrit, his mother monitored reading activities of the children, be it pedagogical or otherwise. She would read to them from the Ramayana and the Bhagavad Gita, and brought about a healthy habit of reading, says Sandeep.
Sandeep Dutt Recommends these three books for the bibliophile in us.
1. Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give 'a last lecture', he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. But the lecture he gave, 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams', wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment because 'time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think'. It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
Randy's lecture about the joy of life – his legacy to his three young children – has become a worldwide phenomenon, as has his book written on the same principles, celebrating the dreams we all try to make a reality. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.
2. Ratan Tata: A Life by Thomas Mathew
This fascinating biography traces Ratan Tata’s years in immaculate detail, from his lonely childhood to his irrepressible youthful exuberance, from his first major job in the conglomerate to being appointed chairman of Tata Sons in 1991 to his role as the head of Tata Trusts, India’s largest philanthropic enterprise. It is as much a story of determination and an unwavering commitment to enduring principles and values as it is a testament to achieving unprecedented corporate success.
3. The Man Who Saw Tomorrow by Naga Tummala
The story of former Doon School headmaster Shomie Das and childhood friends turned business partners, Naga Tummala and Raj Yarlagadda is a fascinating account of vision and enterprise, and the struggle that went into setting up the institution of their dream.
The Man Who Saw Tomorrow details Shomie Das’s ideas about how education should be an experience that children enjoy and not one that has been thrust upon them. What that entails is a deep acknowledgement and respect for the child as a unique individual.
Originally published: Mentor | mentor.lxl.in | Dec 30, 2024 | 6 min read
