Read Your Way To The Top

As we come towards the end of our solid campaign, we reflect back on the importance of installing a reading culture among youngsters.

The problem is far worse than we realise, where even with the popularity of young adult fiction like Harry Potter and Twilight the problem still remains. Throughout our campaign, we have shown the reasons behind youngsters not reading and also the ways by which if incorporated can help stop the decline of the reading habit.

‘Read your way to the top’ isn’t just a random message but is sincerely targetted towards the reality of what can happen if you follow it. There is no shortcut to the solution but requires the involvement of people to raise this concern on the behalf of making a smart world in the future. We would want our leaders, innovators and artists to be technically sound and mentally gifted. Books are an important catalyst in establishing such a role.

Everyone especially parents and teachers has a bigger role to play in making this younger generation lose their mindset regarding reading, and cultivate an open viewpoint towards such a habit.

We also urge the people following our campaign to get involved by creating a difference by preaching the benefits and making others aware of the dire need to make a change before it is too late.

Before we sign off, we would like to thank our readers for their immense support and endless love, now its time we use our learning and strive together to make a peaceful reading world.

-Paras Agarwal

Something is Missing

What is missing in these pictures?

 

A couple of kids, in their bedroom, fully engaged with a tablet.

 

People sitting on an Aeroplane with their own tapes while some dozed off and others stare at a small movie screen.

 

Family members with their smartphones on a dinner table.

 

 

What is missing from these pictures, and increasingly from our lives is the activity through which we learned the most of what we know of the world. What’s missing is the knowledge and information that forms our patterns of thought. What’s missing is the absolute factor that progresses the underlying growth and development of the young.

Now that importance of culture is established. We need the reading more than ever. Instead of asking others what they have read lately, people nowadays assume that nobody gets much time to read books. How did this come to happen?

Books the oldest form of print had been so prominent in our history that we could have hardly seen it coming but the problem does not lie with the publication since publishers are constantly churning out books (133,196 new titles listed in “Books in Print” in the past year) but on our change in the habit of reading. The modern-day readers read with the only goal and that is to gain a quick, conversation-enhancing topic as they try to skim through the words. The habit of reading rapidly has been a major factor in the decline of the traditional way of reading. Similarly, the newspaper that once was the morning ritual of every household has been affected significantly by the change. What’s more interesting is that young people are losing the newspaper habit even faster than their parents. “We are developing a generation that has no interest in reading except insofar as it is assigned in school,” concludes Daniel Kevles, professor of humanities at Caltech. There is a general lack of public affairs among the students.

The technological revolution is unstoppable but that does not mean the old order should fade away with it. Even though electronic media has taken over print media, we need to understand the intellectual and seriousness quotient it has on art, education, religion, politics and journalism. Reading is central to our culture. It is connected to virtually all the forces that shaped our culture. The question, as we leave the age of print for the uncharted waters of this new electronic age, is whether we risk losing much of what reading enabled us to gain.
Share your opinions and thoughts with us through comments or use the hashtag #risethroughreading on social media.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

-Paras Agarwal