Dear Editor,

I was a later bloomer in school. I never entered a classroom until I was seven years and nine months old. I never even had the luxury of preschool education, so imagine how inept, ignorant, and unintelligent I was among children who were my peers but already knew their alphabet and were able to phonetically challenge words.

I remember how lost I felt until one day the light turned on in my brain and I came to the awareness that learning is the magic key that takes you where you want to be. So I buckled up my shoes and embraced English philosopher Francis Bacon’s adage “Reading maketh a full man,” and coupled that with the biblical injunction, “Blessed is he that readeth.”

I read voraciously, from my Nola book (first grade reader) to classics like
The
Pilgrim’s Progress by the time I was in fourth grade. I credit my grandmother because one of the items on her regular Friday trips to the Black River market was to stop by the parish library and bring me reading materials. I read everything I could find. As I recalled, I read every book in my little elementary school library, I read
The Children’s Own, old newspaper articles, even paper found along the road, ere long my addiction for reading was self-diagnosed.

When I became a classroom teacher I went on a campaign to see every child under the scope of my influence develop an appetite for reading, because I personally found out that when one reads vocabulary expands, writing skills are enhanced, creativity increases, and imagination expands. Reading takes you to places you have never been and helps you meet people you have never met. Reading is like nutrients that provides academic growth cells, repair brain cells, and make you develop a wonderful thirst for learning. Parents and teachers should, therefore, facilitate reading amongst children if the schools are going to improve overall in their curriculum.

Very recently I noticed that Governor Ronald DeSantis of Florida has been flexing his political muscles in disallowing certain books in Florida school libraries. This type of censorship is a deterrent to knowledge, it’s a fettering of academic access. While I believe in grade-appropriate reading material, I don’t think that school libraries should be hindered from having books that don’t match up with this governor’s whims and fancies.

If a person can read any material and understand it, then I would say kudos to literacy. He cites pornography, graphic depiction of sex acts, same-sex models, etc as being among the reasons for the banning. Therefore, the bigger question that then begs to be asked is: What will he do about the internet? What I think the governor ought to do is launch a campaign encouraging reading, because a large percentage of people in his state are not able to read well. As a professor of English and communication arts I know that full well because I am seeing it manifested. Even at the tertiary level I am hoping that his virus won’t come across the water to Jamaica.

I feel pressed to issue a clarion call to get a programme in place in Jamaican schools to motivate, encourage, and challenge our students to get hooked on reading. Current trends reveal that in this ultra-modern age, when knowledge has increased, there is a large percentage of students who are leaving school neither numerate nor literate, all because, in most cases, they would rather be on social media doing things that are neither elevating nor educative.

Since Jamal (Jamaica Movement for the Advancement of Literacy) has aged and retired, I would like to throw out a School Reading Initiative so that everyone from poorhouse to King’s House can learn to read and comprehend. It was Walt Disney who said, “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.”

If we are ever going to break the generational cycle of poverty and dent the gun violence culture, then we need to begin by creating a reading culture that will improve intelligence, self-esteem, academic and skills competency, thereby bringing about political, social, spiritual, and economic change.

I will continue to encourage reading, and wish I could find some cohorts to help me get the spark out so we can start a conflagration.

Oprah, in launching a similar venture to encourage reading, said, “What I love most about reading is that it gives you the ability to reach higher ground and keep climbing.” Together, let’s stimulate the next generation to read and keep climbing.

Burnett Robinson

Blpprob@aol.com