The habit of reading in our society has decreased to a considerable extent. Today, only a small number of our youth visit libraries to read books or visit bookstores to buy books. There are several causes of this decline in book reading.
Lack of proper education; lack of reading culture in schools and colleges; expensiveness and unavailability of books; scarcity of libraries; and our on the electronic gadgets are few of these causes.
Unfortunately our society does not have any reading culture. The education system of our country is not based on sound footings. It encourages rote learning rather than critical thinking which makes our education a great hurdle in the way to promote reading habit.
We don’t see people buying and reading books. What a pity that even if someone buys a book and tries to read it, we don’t encourage them rather we laugh at them. The people who read a lot in our society are hostile to them. The book readers are considers as crazy and mad.
Reading habit is developed at early stage of life. Sociologist and psychologist agreed that our habits are developed during our early age.
Thus when children do not see their elders reading, how come they themselves can develop the habit of reading?
Again are also very unfortunate that we have been deprived of the opportunities to develop this remarkable habit at an early age in our families.
The expensive and costly books are yet another hurdle in the way of reading. Books are not our priorities; we both the people and government don’t considered books as integral part of our grooming. Why should one buy a book if it is very expensive? In almost every other country books are available at cheaper rates and the government subsidizes their prices.
The most important aspect that we don’t have proper libraries that contain sufficient number of books that is beneficial for every one. Only few government libraries are there but they not upgraded according to the needs of today that’s why people are reluctant to visit them.
Reading habit can be developed by the teachers at school if they make it compulsory for students to issue books from school library, go through them thoroughly, then they should organize competition among students to develop reading habit.
So by applying these changes in our society we can reduce the declining reading habit which can brings a positive change in our society in future.
