Editor,

Reference is made to the letter, "Nurturing the reading culture starts from home” (The New Times, March 3).

I thank Mr. Gipindi for sharing how his daughter enjoys reading more now than she was reading before. The absurd implication in this is that hadn’t your daughter left Rwanda for another country, her reading wouldn’t have improved as much.

This revelation should serve as a wakeup call on the school system in Rwanda. Pupils should be encouraged to read as early as when they are one year old, otherwise it will break when you do it during maturity.

The reading culture in Rwanda is still low but this can change with a good strategy.

The strategy should simply be: let all stakeholders in education play their respective part in a way that is monitored. How? The Ministry of Education should provide enough books to all schools, teachers should allow learners to borrow books, take them home, read them and summarise what they have read and parents should find time to read with their children.

I am sharing this both as a parent and as an active educationist. I am a parent of three and all of them started reading in Primary One. Depending on the volume of the book, kids can read a minimum of two books in a week. I mean books that are appropriate for the each age/year group.

The mistake that some parents make is to think that teachers will show everything to their kids and they have no role to play. I often pity parents who have this mentality because teachers can only teach your child to a certain percentage.

Usually, teachers give around 40%-50% and the remaining percentage is dependent on other stakeholders, the learner, parents, extra-coaching and so on.

As I conclude, I would advise all people interested to know how important reading is, should look at it in this light: Reading is likened to a meeting between the writer and the reader, what a chance for your brains! A reader’s mind interacts with that of the writer.

Reading is also equivalent to eating; don’t read and starve your mind/intellect. How will people develop their language skills? How will you be fluent in a language? Read books in that language and learn the rules, develop the vocabulary and as we know, ‘practice makes perfect’.

Remember you can’t expect to harvest any fruits from a mind that is empty....we are what we eat (body wise), we utter what we read (speech) and our behaviour reflects our social environment (attitude). A word to a wise is sufficient!

Paul Runesha