The postulation that a society benefits immensely from its reading habits is easier to prove than dispute for many obvious reasons. All you need to be convinced of its truth is to imagine a world without books. In this context, the conclusions of the fourth annual cultural development report 2012 by the Arab Thought Foundation put forth disturbing figures about reading habits in the Arab world.
According to the report, an average Arab child reads for “six minutes” a year and an Arab adult reads a quarter of a page in a year. These figures indicate an abysmal state of affairs. They provide urgency to a requirement that deserves to be an integral part of social development. The habit of reading is an intellectual investment every society needs to make at all times for its own socio-cultural health. Every adult and child must be encouraged to take up reading as a pleasurable, rewarding habit that can immensely enrich their lives and the best way to ensure this is to inculcate the habit at a young age. In many studies on reading habits, one of the common themes is that active readers admit they learnt to appreciate books because they were encouraged to read as children. Many of them also say they were read to by their parents every day. In an era where television and social media have entirely ambushed the abilities of children and adults to think for themselves, books, in any medium, offer you the chance to rediscover your innate ability to remain naturally sentient and imaginative.
