Bid to shatter record in mother tongue
CHILDREN across South Africa joined hands last week in a bid to shatter a 2016 world record of reading aloud in their mother tongue for World Read Aloud Day 2017.
Each year, Nal’ibali – a national reading campaign – sends out a call to its partners to join in celebrating the power of reading aloud. This year, the campaign wanted to also break its record of reading aloud to 510 000 children.
The result will be announced by the organisers next week.
“When we read aloud, children observe and are inspired to read. We need to show them that good stories can come out from books,” said Bongani Godide, the KZN support co-ordinator for Nal’ibali. The campaign invited nine schools across KZN to participate.
Godide emphasised the need for parents to teach their children how to read. The campaign, he added, organised reading expos in schools to start after-school reading clubs.
“We want to create an environment where children will feel that they are not in school but in a reading-inspired room of books. They should read with ease. As parents we need to become the right role models for our children. Buy them books, read out to them and encourage them to join reading clubs. Schools ought to dedicate an hour to reading.”
A former Durban English teacher, Bala Thaver, acknowledged that the current generation of children were not reading enough.
“Children’s attention and interests divert to the digital age as children have easy access to cellphones and the internet. In addition, both parents work and cannot supervise their children’s reading habits,” said Thaver. He added that schools were faced with many challenges such as lack of funds, lack of sufficient resources and inadequate staff.
“The digital age was non-existent years ago. A library period was part of the curriculum which had department funding. Today, schools are trying their best despite the lack of resources but it is not enough.”
POST spoke to Durban book store owner and author, Kiru Naidoo about the reality of book clubs in South Africa. “Book clubs mix the art of conversation with the joy of reading. Even two members can be a club… Book clubs are fantastic for promoting new authors, especially home-grown ones.”
Naidoo said though convenient, electronic books would never be a substitute for the addictive smell of ink on paper.