Lack of lots of books, not culture, is reason for lack of reading

A lot of people have murmured statements to me along the lines of, “Rwanda does not have a reading culture. It is an oral culture. You really have to find a way to get kids to read.” This is perhaps said because it is difficult to find a book store in Rwanda and, at times, difficult to get the kids in the village to read whole English books, cover to cover. I always reply, “we just have to find the best, junkiest, risqué/action-packed/girly/exciting/y’know books out there so the kids feel like reading is as fun as watching television.” And then I get the same, “yes, but remember that there is no culture of reading.”

This annoys me. When I walk around outside of the ASYV village with a book, there are always boys and girls and women and men coming up to me to read over my shoulder. They get next to no practice reading, so they cannot read as well, so reading an entire book is more challenging.

I gave one girl from a surrounding village, around five or six kilometers away, a comic book to read – a pretty-hard-to-read batman comic book – and she was reading as she walked, just like New Yorkers on the subway reading as they travel. This particular girl, who was twenty years old, did not have enough money to attend secondary school, though her English was very good – that was the only reason I could speak with her. The fees for secondary school were around $60, which was at least three or four months pay for her.

Instead, she was learning how to be a mason and hopefully ill wmake enough money, one day, to attend secondary school. Though perhaps not soon enough, before she gets married. I mention this because the only reason she was not reading much, much more was because of lack of funds to buy books and buy the education that would allow her to improve her reading and make it worthwhile. It was a a "lack of culture in reading."

If the kids at ASYV need encouragement reading, it is no more encouragement then kids in any country need at age, say, eight, when they are know how to read but not quite. So I want to make it really clear to all who say, “there is no culture of reading” in Rwanda, or other East African countries: “You cannot say people are not reading due to lack of reading culture if people do not have the money to buy books or, growing up, could not buy books and practice reading." Find a control group of kids that had easy access to books at an early age, and whose parents also had easy, cheap book access at an early age, and then figure out if it’s about the “reading culture.” And please don’t try to sound culturally-sensitive by saying, “oh, it’s because they have a strong oral tradition” as if a strong oral tradition is at all mutually exclusive with a strong reading culture - if anything, the two compliment each other. Jews had a very strong oral tradition and an almost zero literacy rate for thousands of years, save for the few people who would read out loud for the community, yet picked up reading fairly quickly when they started getting access to libraries and schools stalked with books. Stalked with books is the key – you cannot expect people, including you or me, to learn how to read if the books are not catchy enough to get you into the habit of reading in the first place. And the more books you have, the easier it is to find the types of books that get you into that habit.

In the butter milk café I always bring an extra magazine with me to give to others to read, because it is a bit unnerving to have something peer over your shoulder as you are reading a book. I have noticed that they read moving their lips, quietly stating the words, and put their fingers on each word as they read it, like you might have done when you first learn how to read in any language. I asked if they had access to a dictionary, and was told that there were only four dictionaries in the whole school, which did not surprise me too much. I was told that they did not really have access to them, that the teachers held them.

It’s not that a person can’t learn to be a perfect reading and love books in that kind of environment. I am sure the kids can go to the teacher with a list of words, the teacher will look them up, and they will continue reading until they come up with a new list of words they do not understand, and slowly but surely it is possible to learn how to read – really read, not fingers-on-words and whispering-out-loud reading. But how many of us have the patience to look up words in our own dictionary, let alone someone else’s you occasionally see, and how much patience would you have to do this if you were also learning how to read to begin with?

At Agahozo-Shalom there are dictionaries and, bless American donors cleaning out their basements, there are lots of fun, movie-inspired, junky romances, mysteries, thrillers, etc. I hope they are read up by the types of people who would not have the patience to read otherwise. Because I do think you need those junky books to get into reading enough to read the classics. And these fun books tend to have happy endings, which these kids, perhaps, need. And the good junk has happy endings that are unexpected and therefore, somehow, believable.

Some at Agahozo-Shalom emphasize the messages the kids take from the books, encouraging the kids to be reflective about the books and see how they can be relevant for their own lives. I guess that’s…nice. But I did not learn how to read, or get into the habit of reading in middle school, by seeing how Sweet Valley High was relevant to my life. It was absolutely not relevant to my life, which is why it was so exciting to read. Even when I graduated to Sweet Valley University, it still was not relevant for my life, and I probably would not read the books if someone made me use “reflective thinking” about Sweet Valley University.

For the required reading books in school, absolutely encourage kids to think about the relevancy to their own lives. Encourage them to use critical thinking, the works. But I think you need that niche of useless reading to gain the reading skills to read the “reflective thinking and critical thinking” types of books, and maybe to even think critically about Batman comic books and Nancy Drew.