adminFredrick Qaphelani Mabikwa Successful Solutions
In Zimbabwe passing English language at O-level has suddenly become very difficult. You will find someone has more than 5 O-level passes but they don’t have English language. They struggle with the subject until they get it after a third or fourth attempt and usually they pass with the gentleman’s mark a “C”. Why English of all subjects? It never used to be like that during our days — 70s into 80s. People can come up with various reasons for this sad development but my lay observation is that our children have lost the reading culture.
May I take you readers back in memory lane. Most of us were born and bred in the high density areas and others of course in the rural areas. Those of us who were born in the urban areas will remember the strong reading culture we had. Remember how much novels we read elokitshini (murokesheni).We read James Hardly Chase, The Hard Boys and Dusty Fog. We read the Pacesetters and Mills and Boon — the list is endless. We shared these novels and they would rotate throughout the whole neighbourhood. Over and above these novels, we read “Comics” — remember comics, these had pictures. Oh! they were a joy to read. The guy who owned most comics was a hero — he even had access to the beautiful girls born from rich families of the teachers and nurses.
Now back to my reading issue. With all this reading, passing English language was not an issue — the issue was the symbol. I remember very well that each lokitshi had a youth club and a library and apart from these novels we exchanged, we got many more books from the local library. We read for leisure and in the process taught ourselves English.
You will agree with me that our English language was self taught. Now today in 2014 …are our children reading? As a former teacher of English and once a teacher always a teacher, I recently met a boy from a local private school who is struggling to finish his set book Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembgwa. When I asked why he was struggling with the book he said the story was boring and the novel had no pictures. Now this is an O-level student…this is very sad.
For those who have read Nervous Conditions, can we honestly say this is a boring story? What is it that our children refer to as an interesting story, if this novel is boring? My heart bleeds when I see the way English is written and spoken by our children. Even those from the private schools who had a culture of speaking good English, now speak a new version of English, which is nothing but slang.
Now that they speak slang come to the writing, the grammar is awful, the spellings emotionally devastating and sentence constructing really depressing — you read a full paragraph that has no punctuation — it is a sentence on its own.
With the passage of time social media has taken over our children. The smart phone rules —WhatsApp, Facebook and all. For those who have afforded their children the privilege of owning smart phones, you will agree with me that this is one aspect our children’s life that has replaced reading.
Our children have no time to read. It is all about the Internet. As to how you can control the phone to balance it with reading and school… I don’t know. I have teenagers as well and am equally struggling. I asked a colleague for advice and he said “just don’t buy them cellphones and if you have already bought, confiscate them.”
Yet another friend said not affording them the phones will make them prey to those who can buy them these phones especially the girls. He further said “as for teenagers, not buying them the phones does not stop them from using them”. I got confused.
I want to urge fellow parents to try and cultivate a reading culture in children. Buy your teenager a novel you have read before, ask them to read it and ask what the story is all about and what have they learnt from the novel.
There is no way our children will read, if we don’t push them. This is why they are failing to read their Literature set books at school, they don’t have a reading culture. Inculcate the reading culture at tender age — the infant stage. There are plenty of children’s books in shops, like the Ladybird series, let us buy these for our children. When you buy toys, buy books as well. The culture of reading bed time stories is an excellent culture for inculcating a reading culture in infants…sooner or later they will be reading those stories on their own.
When reading the newspaper dear father, share interesting stories with your children, tomorrow you will find them reading the paper on their own. If you don’t instill a reading culture in your children at a tender age, don’t expect miracles at O-level. By the way they are certain things a teacher cannot teach students.
A teacher cannot teach a student the technical side of English, the student just has to expose themselves through reading. Things like spelling, grammar, and sentence construction cannot be taught, these are learnt through exposure and exposure is through reading. Just as much as you have a Bible in the house, have a good Dictionary as well so that children can look up words they don’t know. We should also encourage the reading of our local languages as well. It is not only English that is important.
Now enough about our children. Now let us look at us the parents, do we have a reading culture? For us to preach to our children about reading, it would be effective if they see us reading? Dear parent when were you last in a bookshop to buy yourself a book to read for your development and pleasure and not for studies? I asked a certain lady when they last read and they told me maybe five years ago, when they were reading to get a driver’s licence and they were reading the Highway Code. Now when you are studying diagrams in the Highway Code to learn which car gives way, which car stops and which car has the right of way, this is not reading.
My lay survey has shown me that most Zimbabwean adults do not read for pleasure and self development, they read for examinations only. How I wish I had figures to prove this. Simple observations — you sit in an airport departure lounge, you will find some foreigners reading while they wait for the plane but most of us Zimbos will be at the bar or talking about making money.
You can still and have your beer in the departure lounge and be reading. A flight is delayed for hours and you just sit there and stare at people. For those in the bar, you are dead drunk by the time the plane arrives. Whenever you travel always carry a book to cover things like delays. You can carry the good book the Bible. You don’t have to carry the hard copy, some of this literature we can now put on our electronic gadgets. A close friend of mine was telling me that he recently slept in his car on his way home by those robots that are controlling traffic at the road construction on the Harare road. I told him that he should always have a book in his car. He slept in broad day light and all the vehicles went past him and a Good Samaritan woke him up when the robot had closed again. A workmate found the book John Maxwell’s’ 17 Laws of Team work on my table and asked to borrow it. He asked me where I got it from and I told him I ordered it from the UK and he said “Oh! so you import books?” “…Yes we do import books” — let’s not only import cars but books as well.
Remember we have the highest literacy rate in Africa and we could shine more if we read more than we are doing. Our children can only read if they see us reading as well. I will conclude on a lighter note about our dying reading culture. A joke is told of us Zimbos that if you want to hide a $100 (US) note in a black Zimbabwean house just slot it in a book, it will stay there kusvika madhongi amera nyanga….
derick.khumalo