₦airaland Forum

There have been complaints about the dearth of reading among the youths. It is a global malaise, but how do we make reading habit-formation for kids who are innocent in this age of declining reading habits?

In this age of social media, most youths spend more time on social media than they do learning. But innocent kids who are yet to be connected online can be connected to the habits of reading and learning. Reading more will enlarge their vocabulary and increase their comprehension skills.

But how can parents encourage their kids to read more books? Can we use incentives to awaken their interest in reading?

In Chimamanda Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele, A Feminist Manifesto In Fifteen Suggestion, written as a letter to her friend on how to empower her daughter, she argues that the best way to teach your child to read is by you as a parent to let your child see you reading. As she puts it: “Teach Chizalum to read. Teach her to love books. The best way is by casual example. If she sees you reading, she will understand that reading is valuable.”

Be the role model for your kids to emulate.

What if parents pay their kids for every book they read? Or you tell them that for every book they read, you will take them to a supermarket for shopping. By using this incentive, can we motivate them to develop a lifelong interest in reading?

Some will argue that the incentives will increase their appetite to read more books without accumulating knowledge because their minds will be at the incentive much more than they will be in learning. Their argument might be that once the incentive stops, the push in reading after the incentives are no more may not be there again. As such, reading becomes boring. They opine that reading should be what we do without any material attachment.

Others might disagree that we can use incentives to awaken their interest in reading and become voracious readers along the way. They will argue that by paying them to read, we are teaching them that reading has value. They opine that if paying them will motivate them to be a voracious reader, why not give it a try? After all, there’s nothing wrong with experimentation.

Chimamanda also didn’t close the door to the money-motivation scheme of paying kids to read. She says, “if all else fails, pay her to read. Reward her.”

When I was around the age of 15, my friends and I usually placed a bet on vocabulary pronunciation and writing. One person would say or pronounce a word he wanted us to write, and anyone who got it right won the bet. But did we learn anything impactful from such an exercise? I do not know! But what I know is that it led us to be interested in searching for vocabulary – nothing more, nothing else.

We didn’t care about the meaning of the word as much as we do for its difficult pronunciation so that our friends would not be able to get its writing. A few days after, we forgot everything about those vocabularies. We were not doing it for learning. We were after winning the bet. So the reason for our vocabulary research was not for the accumulation of knowledge but for financial gain.

One of my friends told me that he started paying her four-year-old daughter for every children book she read. He said after a year, he stopped paying her, but her daughter never stopped asking for more books. Although we disagreed on the modus operandi.

However, in our society today, the dilemma is moral bankruptcy. Most people do not know where corruption begins and ends. This is one of the reasons some people see paying kids to read as a corrupt practice that will erode the ethics of learning. They see it as a bribe to action.

Parents who pay their kids for books they read did so with pure intentions to get their kids to develop interests in reading and learning. But the problem is that the intention may be good, but the action might be corrupted.

Growing up, we can kill to lay our hands on certain books.

We have to register in several Libraries' both state and Federal so as to have access to these books and even formed reading clubs of which you must be given some lists of book to buy before you are eligible to join.

Grew up In the same university environment as Chimamanda and went to same school with his sibling okey and the reading habit was key. She is where she is today because of this habit and so are many of us.

Books open your minds to a whole new life of imaginations,adventures and knowledge.

Kids should be encouraged to read books like never before. E get why!

dangermouse:
Growing up, we can kill to lay our hands on certain books.

We have to register in several Libraries' both state and Federal so as to have access to these books and even formed reading clubs of which you must be given some lists of book to buy before you are eligible to join.

Grew up In the same university environment as Chimamanda and went to same school with his sibling okey and the reading habit was key. She is where she is today because of this habit and so are many of us.

Books open your minds to a whole new life of imaginations,adventures and knowledge.

Kids should be encouraged to read books like never before. E get why!

Na him you follow dey here with backbenchers dey type rubbish?

eepeepook:
Na him you follow dey here with backbenchers dey type rubbish?

How do you mean?

If you are a back bencher in quote, I am not
I come here to read news about my country , which is scarce out here anyways and maybe interact with reasonable people who also abound on the forum

explain it better to make me understand

dangermouse:
How do you mean?

If you are a back bencher in quote, I am not
I come here to read news about my country , which is scarce out here anyways and maybe interact with reasonable people who also abound on the forum

Dey play.

Book reading is good but cultivating it isn't easy one you become distracted by adventure of life.

eepeepook:
Dey play.

You obviously don't have anything reasonable to say

Here's what I did for my daughter since I sent her to Uganda.

I brought the following books

How to win friends and influence people
The boron letters
Dan Kennedy big mouth big money
my life in advertising Claud Hopkins
The law of human nature Robert green
Napoleon Hill unpopular book how to grow rich through selling.
And lots of fiction books
And 13 more books.

Told her to summarize each chapter a week for $50 (big money in Uganda)

I did this even when $50 was hard to get.

And we have to go over it to make sure she understands it.

Nobody go come bs her for any reason because she understands human nature.

But at 13 she's already doing ok for herself.

Any requests for money is with a handwritten letter post office chop my money well well.

Dhl use me shine but it's an investment I'd pay again and again.