Backwardness equation
By Dr Khalid A Al-Saleh
Results reached by the publication follow-up committee of the supreme council for culture in Egypt said more than a decade ago, the Arab world was at the tail end of the “reading” nations list, because the average reading rate is no more than a quarter page per individual per year, while the United States was on top. According to a study by the books and publications committee, the Arab world publishes 1,650 books annually, while the United States alone publishes 85,000 books yearly. The study of the committee agreed with similar results reached by UNESCO in 2014, which showed the share of every one million Arabs is no more than 30 books, compared to 854 books per million Europeans.
The reading rate of an Arab individual is a quarter page per year compared to the reading rate of an American individual, which is up to 11 books annually. This information and others is known to us for many decades, and discussed by thousands of educated Arabs since the start of the last century, until it became among the information that is memorized by the Arab citizen of all cultural standards and used for self-ridicule and going deeper in masochism. Reading is love and training, and those who were not trained to read at a young age are rarely successful in training themselves at an older age. Reading is a skill children gain to benefit from once they become adults.
Arab children were suffering from a high rate of illiteracy 60 years ago, as well as difficulty in accessing books. Despite this, the reading percentage among them was much higher than that among children today amid falling illiteracy, particularly in the Arab Gulf countries, and ease of accessing books. Educated Arabs were not successful over 100 years in convincing decision makers to adopt a plan to encourage reading among Arab children. They did not succeed for a simple reason, which is the existence of a large gap between decision makers and the educated, to a point where a saying became famous among our decision makers about the educated, which is: “Consult them and do otherwise”.
Free reading classes stopped in 90 percent of schools, and 95 percent of libraries are neglected in Arab schools, while the situation in foreign schools is much worse, as they encourage reading in foreign languages and Western culture. They teach our children another culture, only to find the Arab child when grown up is living among us, but he is a foreign body, and may attack Islamic culture as the case is today. With this they spread the disease of alienation among us, which is the most dangerous disease that can affect nations.
Our grandchildren are living in a difficult environment today, as we were not only satisfied with not encouraging our children to read in their language and love our culture; rather we encourage them to disable the thinking and intelligence centers in them by encouraging them, with ignorance in many cases, to sit in front of social media and network programs for many hours, and this is the great calamity. A scientific study by Michigan State University that included 1,300 children to gauge scientific gain and its relation to sitting in front of the TV, researchers found and warned of the statistical relationship between the number hours watching TV by children and reduced scientific gain and acquiring harmful social behaviors.
The study showed that early childhood is an important period for the growth of the brain and forming of behaviors in children, so it must be utilized ideally. Americans are still complaining because their children are sitting for two hours daily in front of the TV, and they present studies to not exceed this period and encourage its reduction. But in our case, a field study by social counselor Taher Al-Nujaidi at the GCC level showed 90 percent of our children aged 3 to 7 sit in front of social media and games for around 5 to 6 hours a day.
What does this mean? It simply means the spread of backwardness among our next generations, as the backwardness equation is a lack of reading plus sitting for hours in front of screens small and large, which equals to a coming generation that is more backward and more dependent on others with inability to keep Allah’s bounties to us. Studies are published, columns are written and screaming mouths warn, while decision makers are not moving. All development efforts are without value if we do not confront the backwardness equation, but who can convince decision makers? A question that has been waiting a long time for an answer.
local@kuwaittimes.com
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