INSPIRATION 101: REVIVING THE READING CULTURE: A PANACEA FOR A KOWLEDGEABLE SOCIETY
Knowledge determines what you do and how you do it. It determines what you say and how you say it. It also determines to a large extent how fast and how far you go in life.
Knowledge could be acquired through formal or informal way. Formal sources of knowledge have a lot to do with book-based information. Written books are a compilation of experiences, records or proven theories. They also house the ways of lives of people as well as divine and legal instructions. Those that give attention to reading access information needed for decent and progressive livelihood.
Daniel and fellow Israelites were wallowing in captivity in Babylon until he located documentation in the books that specified the duration of that captivity. He said, “I understood from books that the captivity was for a period of time”. He was referring to 70 years. Based on this knowledge, he realized that they had over stayed the period of that captivity. Daniel consulted relevant authorizes with the document and in no time their freedom was granted.
Many people have suffered, are suffering and would still suffer due to failure to retrieve and act on the right information at the right time. Freedom, comfort, promotion and wealth continue to evade us because we avoid the books. Every life question has a life- long answer just as every challenge has a permanent solution written somewhere by someone. The moment the right answer or solution is provided from untainted sources the problem walks away in search of the next ignorant, book-shy victim.
Religious, academic and other books have a lot of solutions to man's daily challenges. Yet we neither have them nor give enough time to study and apply their contents. The culture of book reading is fast fading away. Does it not surprise you that youths know new entrants in fashion, automobiles, phones, movies, divas, just to mention a few, but cannot say same of books, journals and authors in their choice fields or faith? People can draw a map of eateries, fun centres and so on in town but would hardly tell you where the bookshops are. Gone are days when wedding, birthday and event gifts were more of books and intellectual exciters, today gifts are more of plates, wears and electronics; more of investment into fashion and entertainment than in the mental faculty; a direct investment into emotion than in real motion. No wonder, we have a lot of empty beauties, booties and bounties around. We also have celebrated but empty leaders leading a mass of fashionable but empty people into shadows of expectations. Our kids have since joined the bandwagon as they now prefer to watch and read from the screen than from the books. The competition between the young and old now is on the number of channels one have watched not number of chapters one has read. As readers diminish so are real leaders and sound leadership accelerating the highways of extinction.
Individual and cooperate captivities will persist so long as people evade the books. Classified information and valuable records will continue to waste in books so long as we prefer to feast on rumour mills instead of traceable references. Formal education targets book- based drills through home works and research with emphasis on referencing. Unfortunately, the book-shy students prefer to copy from the few that went into the books. Some will just copy and paste from the net without processing and adapting the information to suit the scenario
The book-shy syndrome means that people spend hours chatting or navigating from one junk site to another in search of fun and excitement and not revolutionary knowledge. It means that we hold tight the channel changers in the sitting rooms in negligence of our personal libraries. Students read for exam purposes alone while graduation means "book divorce" to many. Consequently, our graduates talk and write like drop outs. Teachers use notes prepared decades ago with latest references dating 19th century. Leaders prefer to set up committees or organize seminars to sit and talk on burning issues instead of going into the relevant books. Hence the belief that written information is hidden information to Africans.
Bring back the book today and you will discover that you are up against a long solved problem or an expired challenge.
Inspiration Express with SC