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Changing approaches to education, the urge to consider academic pursuits as irrelevant and digital age all will make the art of reading turn into an artifice.
The publishing business in Pakistan over the years say from 1972 to 2011 has witnessed a huge increase in the numbers of titles published. According to one source “ the number of titles published in Pakistan jumped from 691 in 1972 to 2,482 in 2011.” According to the same source the literacy rate has gone up from 21 per cent in 1972 to the 57 per cent” by 2011. So as suggested by the seasoned journalist and former assistant editor of Dawn, Ms.Zubeida Mustafa in her article “ The pleasure of Reading” published in Dawn in May 2012, the above mentioned figures , given the still low rate of literacy , the measly print runs being as low as 500 in some cases could hardly be regarded “as a criterion to measure” the peoples’ reading habit in Pakistan. No doubt along with the growing number of publishing companies and the phenomenal success of well-established publishing houses like Oxford University Press, Pakistan, there has been a tradition of holding book exhibitions and lately of having the literary festivals. Despite this reading in Pakistan remains a passion for a few and of those who even in this age of electronic media simply cannot think of breathing without books. These bookworms could be found among the post-independence generation of politicians, bureaucrats, media persons ,armed forces generals and of course in the scholarly community who could rightly be placed in the category of well –read persons. But what about the new generation, are they really reading or being forced to read. The answer seems to be that with a few exceptions the reading habit is dying on account of fact that education is not being taken as a life-long process of learning but rather as a business of acquiring the degrees, the academic pursuits being replaced by snappy activities which require little mental faculties and the digital age which has snatched from us the stoicism which comes from staying focused and reading helps that a lot.
Changing approaches to education: Education since the independence of Pakistan has not been a privilege available to all and sundry, a rise in more accessibility to education was seen during the decade of 1970s when more and more educational institutions were brought under the state control, however, with the onset of eighties , the private sector started having an open field with the mushroom growth in the number of educational institutions all over the country with a phenomenal rise of what we call today the coaching or tuition centres. With private sector charging exorbitant fees, the whole concept of education transformed from teacher –student to service provider to customer or client relationship. In this changing scenario, reading a highly academic pursuit and a must for higher education hardly found a space in curricular or extracurricular activities. For most students it remained confined to reading some notes or going for text books which in principle are supposed to be a no-no at the university level education.
Higher education or university level learning has always meant a bent of mind towards the academia. Whether one agrees with it or not it cannot be other than scholastic in arguments and how one is going to have all those desirables without reading. In our rush to be practical and somehow to be called professionals we have focused so much on acquiring automation or mechanical skills even in disciplines of social sciences and humanities that we excluded reading as one of the prerequisites for understanding the very social phenomenon that need to be addressed.
The digital age no doubt has made accessibility to information and knowledge a non-issue, however, it has made the seekers of knowledge to compromise on quality ,the question is not just how many students are reading ;the question is also what they are reading. Whatever is available on line in the form of courses or some reading material certainly does not qualify as something to be appreciated or thoroughly enjoyed. It has not only reduced the significance of having a physical access to books but has also excluded the teacher from the entire context. Who can imagine a class of literature or for that matter social sciences or even physical sciences without a teacher who through his impassioned appeal, expertise and love for the knowledge makes the students unfold the mysteries and the awe of the written word.
Excluding reading from our syllabus or curriculum has already produced disasters at the level of higher education. With so much inequality in the society because of different systems of education, we are witnessing one more distinction here those have been taught to read and then write are on the level of excellence and those who have just been asked to learn everything by heart have not reached even the levels of mediocre. This applies to all professions be it the doctors, engineers, lawyers and the teachers. Even those who are well-read given the apathy of society towards reading do sound hopeless and those who are simply ignorant of the efficacy of reading hardly could distinguish between being passionate and impassioned. The passionate intensity that we are witnessing around us as a society could be summed up in one of the famous quotations of English poet W.B. Yeats, “ The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Farzana Shakoor. (2014) .., Journal of Social Sciences & Interdisciplinary Research, Volume 3, Issue 1.
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