Lack Of Reading Should Not Impede Our Progress

The proverbial “if you want to hide something from a black man, put it in a book” is fast becoming a tragedy. What this quotation means in both symbolic and practical terms is that, something precious in terms of content or physical object might be hidden in a book, but because the average black/African literate doesn’t like reading anything aside his/her school materials for examination purpose, that useful material will elude him.

Today if you upload images on social media, you are sure to attract a lot of comments, but if you post reading materials with same medium and audience, far fewer comments will be attracted. Reason being that, same audience would not spend the minutes they spend on watching images and videos for entertainment to acquire the priceless knowledge about life issues through reading.

In the past, before formal education came to Africa, when our ancestors had no knowledge about now common names like books, pens and/or papers, much less read a book, such a quotation was not a surprise. But in the 21^st century Ghana in particular, and Africa in general, where basic formal education has been made free and mandatory, same should/must not be said of us. This unfortunate reality is what Dee Lee, read on a New York radio station from his article entitled “They Are still our slaves” Below are some of the key things he read from that article.

“Their ignorance is the primary weapon of containment. A great man once said “the best way to hide something from a black is to put in a book.” We now live in the informative age. They have gained opportunity to read any book through their fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are books readily available at amazon, not to mention their own black bookstores that provide solid blueprints to reach economic equality (which should have been their fight all along) but few read consistently, if any at all. According to Tomie dePaola, “Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything”.

As a king/queen in the Great Britain, it is a requirement that you read a host of journals and newspapers every week. Former presidents Mark Anthony and Bill Clinton of the United States were/are widely acclaimed as great readers, with the latter reported to have read a record 300 books in one year. President Obama is also a great reader. And that is what the leaders of these world super powers continuously do to garner the needed knowledge to steer the affairs of their already advanced nations.

So if an African country like Ghana which has a balanced rate between literacy and illiteracy, some of the literates in our ranks doesn’t like reading and this rather unfortunate quote about an average black man has come to stay, the rather deteriorating state of our country is just going to worsen the more, with no other option than to go back to our slave masters to read and control us.

Of course before formal education came to Africa, just as philosophy recognizes sage philosophers; the wisdom of African leaders with no formal education, our ancestors had their own ways of socializing their younger ones. Their methods had its strengths and weaknesses. Even though their methods had its own strengths and weaknesses, almost everything has been discarded to embrace the slave masters’.

That is not the main issue here, but it must quickly be pointed out that, as our wise elders say “you can force a horse to the riverside, but you can’t force it to drink” so “if it must be done, it must be done well” because in order to reap the optimum benefits from most efficient formal education, it is a combination of good financial standing from parents, reading, writing and researches by students, and massive investment in infrastructure, teachers and teaching materials by the government. So with the swiftness with which we have enacted laws to make basic education mandatory, measures to inculcate reading culture among students and all the other components should be same.

In sum, for every 21^st century black person, that quotation should be taken with a pinch of salt, because we have the capability to read and/or change our fortunes and broaden our horizon. Change is you and I, not a politician or anybody.