Still Waters
mavila@theguidon.com
While working on my senior seminar paper (a.k.a. thesis), which aims to promote an obscure charity, I discovered non-profit organization Progresibong Edukasyon tungo sa Kaunlaran at Kapayapaan (PEKK). PEKK is a non-profit organization geared towards promoting the importance of education–particularly reading–to public school children.
One of their current projects is the “iLove2Read” campaign in Quezon City, which goes around the city via street library, encouraging children and adults to pick up a book.
The organization’s task, while noble, is incredibly tedious. In a world where long sentences are constantly edited into shorter, yet made up terms, how can people be convinced that reading is still a worthwhile thing to do?
This generation’s culture has been often called the “instant” age, where everything can be acquired in a snap. The fast food and ready-to-eat food industries made sure that we can eat while were on the go. Online shopping has made it possible for people to purchase items at the click of a button, without having to leave the house.
This “instant” culture is not helping promote the reading industry at all. The rise of the Internet has pretty much shut down the appeal of a lengthy novel.
An unwritten Internet rule is to keep things as short as possible. Rarely does one go online to read something that requires a lot of scrolling down – unless it has nice pictures, of course.
Current online social networking phenomenon Plurk has encouraged the value of being concise. Plurk is a website built around the concept of the “one-sentence blog,” allowing users to place short “status messages” about themselves throughout the day. I once saw three friends sitting right next to each other, each one checking their respective Plurk accounts. I guess simply talking doesn’t cut it anymore.
With all these innovations, it seems like everyone is in a hurry to get places. The more a certain option provides the least effort with the least amount of time, the better.
Thus, reading a book becomes burdensome. For those on-the-go, there’s SparkNotes.com for a book’s synopsis and story analysis. And, for those really popular books, one can just watch the film version.
“We are not a reading community,” PEKK Founder Jose Visitacion Pavia told me. “Tayo yung mga taong pagkauwi ng bahay, uupo at manonood ng TV (We are the ones who, upon coming home, sits down and watches TV).”
It is unfortunate that people have forgotten the value of a book. That though it is not as visual as television, it stimulates thinking, allowing us to imagine rather than see.
Moreover, it helps improve grammar. While texting has ruined our capacity to spell properly, reading might help us re-learn them.
Best of all, reading helps one relax. Amidst all the hurrying we often do, it would be nice to slow things down and open a book.
Unfortunately, the quickness provided by various forms of new media trumps the unhurried environment a book gives. As long as we keep on hurrying and looking for the “instant fix,” books will constantly be overlooked.
With this in mind, all PEKK has to do is overcome the novelty of the Internet and all other forms of “instant fixes.”
Talk about having their work cut out for them.
