FROM THE PUBLIC EDITOR’S DESK: Importance of reading
At school, fifteen kilometres from your region’s headquarters, your teacher keeps reminding you: “Read whatever your eyes can land on.” And you do it.
You go reading almost the same things daily: Form II. Staff Room. Dispensary. Toilet. Kigarama Dormitory. Headmaster’s Office. Laboratory. Dining Hall. You read all that your eyes can land on. When you are lucky to go to town you also read. Your eyes land on names of streets, writings on walls and
gates to big buildings, road signs, cross road advertisements, headlines on newspapers at newsstands, and on a piece of paper left flying on fringes of gardens and buildings.
To a person who can read, this is obvious, isn’t it? Every letter is an image and every image calls for attention. A word is a collection of images. A sentence is a “public rally” of images. Images are simultaneously seen and read.
With the obviousness inherent in the act of seeing and reading; the teacher’s insistence sounded bizarre to most students. But I believe the teacher had one thing in mind: You read in order to know, to understand (obtain thorough knowledge), to discover, to remember, to do better, to stir your thinking, to communicate/share.
And that was outside classroom. The teacher would say, and I would insist, that when you read, you increase your ability for grasp and enhance your capacity to communicate and share.
But it works for the same advantages in class. Selected text and supplementary books – physical and online – are not meant for a glance, but “full consumption” for acquisition of intended purpose – knowledge.
Later, there is reading without a human teacher or instructor – reading beyond schools, colleges and universities; unending reading for unending knowledge and production of “goods of knowledge” hitherto unknown.
Look at it this way: Unending reading goes with unending learning and, but with a purpose, i.e. permanently reading for a purpose.
Now let me tell you what I saw recently when I visited a friend. He reads a great deal. He buys books and reads from the internet. He has a list of over 300 titles read online.
Get to see part of the library and be patient: Homo Deus – A brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari (pgs.513); The State of Africa – A history of the continent since independence, by Martin Meredith (pgs.770); African Macraking – 75 Years of Investigative Journalism from Africa, edited by Anya Schiffrin (pgs. 347).
Here you find The Wealth of My Mother’s Wisdom, by Terrence J (pgs. 226); My Life, My Purpose, (memoirs) by Benjamin Mkapa (pgs. 320); and Under Education In Africa – From colonialism to neoliberalism, by Karim F. Hirji (pgs. 293).
The titles above, among over 1,500 in this home library, can tell what kind of person my host is. He is an avid reader, thinker, well informed, and motivator doing the kind of purposive reading directed by the DESIRE to be what he wants to be. The young man under the age of 40, has influenced creation of a number of groups now working as small entrepreneurs in artifacts and mushroom farming.
As I looked around in the shabby library, my eyes land on a copy of a less voluminous title: Mental Independence: An Innovator’s Guide To Transformational Thinking, by Wale Akinyemi (pgs. 121). Let us share his thinking:
“Change doesn’t happen in the world because there were conferences on change. It happens because individuals decide to change and this creates a cultural atmosphere around them that goes viral. Do not underestimate your power to bring transformation to this continent. You are one decision away.”
Another treat: “What makes a team great is not the fact that they think alike. It is the fact that they can think differently in the same direction and arrive at the same destination. They can be united in their diversity…”
And this, “…I personally hate meetings where I ask the team what they think and everyone keeps quiet or agrees with me. My most valuable assets are not those who always agree with me but those whose minds have been liberated to think to a point where they can challenge my ideas intelligently.”
Do you read?
