April 23 is internationally observed as a day to celebrate the gift of literacy and the world of reading. Children who read grow up to be inventors, innovators, trailblazers, leaders, and mentors. Books are inextricably linked to mankind. People rely on them for spiritual, academic, or recreational reasons.
The majority of South African primary schools are chronically under-resourced in terms of books, which exacerbates our youth’s reading crisis. Cultural factors have also contributed to our reading disaster. Most parents do not read to their children frequently because they are illiterate.
Libraries and book retailers have few inexpensive African language children’s books, and the majority of books sold are in English, one of the country’s minority languages.
The 2030 Reading Panel’s 2023 reading behaviour study, produced by education economist Nic Spaull…
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Sunday Independent (Digital) - 1 Issue, 2023-04-23