Reading culture in children #EnezaChat September 2.

JulietEneza Media, EnezaChatsLeave a Comment

A bedtime story --- Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

A bedtime story — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

There is a common ‘misinformed’ saying among Kenyans, that if you want to hide something from a Kenyan, you put it in a book. In preparation for the International Literacy Day, we held an #EnezaChat to find out success stories of instilling a reading culture in children from a young age.

it turns out that Kenyans actually do read. There is a crop of book lovers who are cultivating the habit in their children. We therefore sought to demystify this half truth that Kenyans don’t read, albeit in a tactful way. below is a sample of how the conversation went on Twitter.

Ben Carson in his book Think Big, talks of how he used to fail at school. His uneducated mother, Sonya Carson, had him together with his brother Curtis to visit the library and pick two books weekly. They would read the books and come up with book reports, which they would present to their mother weekly. Now, if you read the book, you would know that reading so much contributed to Ben loving the routine and his grades improving.

There are lots of initiatives seeking to instill the love of reading in children. One of them is the Read Aloud initiative which has been adopted locally by Story Moja publishers. They have reading ambassadors go to primary schools and read with children out of a selected storybook. Maybe we will feature them here one day.

You can follow the conversations on twitter under the hashtag #EnezaChat and if you are in the education field and are interested to be featured on our weekly chats, feel free to reach out on juliet@enezaeducation.com

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