Developing a Culture of Reading

One of my International students in English began a great discussion in class with one of her paragraphs and the discussion has continued in a number of other contexts. The subject was the lack of a culture of reading. She focused on Burundi, her home country, but the ensuing discussions have revealed that the same lack of culture is a struggle in other developing African countries. Her paragraph below will give you a frame of reference for the beginning for this ongoing discussion.

She wrote, “Reading is a challenge for educated people in Burundi. Actually, there is not a culture of reading in that country. For example, the rare bookstores which exist don’t have customers, and books stay in the bookstore for years. That situation can be explained in three reasons. First of all, there is a lack of libraries. The only good libraries that exist are in big cities of the country, and it’s expensive to get registered in them. The second reason is that there are no local publishing companies to promote local authors and to promote reading in the same way. The third reason is that the elite don’t read even newspapers or books. So the verb” to read” is spelled the same way as the verb “to drink” in Kirundi. A lot of Burundian intellectuals prefer drinking beer instead of reading.”

Since her writing, we have discussed why this is the case. Beyond the writer’s suggestions, many think that because the culture was an oral one before colonization that has set a frame of reference for the people. Others have suggested that the expense and the difficulty of getting books have discouraged reading. Others have suggested that the struggle with language and which is the preferred language of the countries is the cause. Most people learn the local language, be it Kirundi or Kinyarwanda or Swahili, but few books are published in those languages, so the reader is left to choose between French or English or some other alternative language, a language that is not as familiar and is more difficult to read. No doubt it is a combination of all of these reasons.

Present library at PIASS

The real question is what to do about this. Is it possible to change a culture? I’m proud to say that PIASS thinks it is. As this discussion has been going on in the classroom, the administration has been wrestling with it in the context of developing the programs of the college. The decision was that in order to develop the programs, we much also develop the library. At present it is small, with a mixture of French and English texts, mostly in theology. As the school expands with programs in Education and Development, more books are needed. As the teaching moves to English rather than French, there is a need to expand the English holdings but there is also a desire to encourage good Kinyarwanda writing. With the help of International partners, PIASS has launched a plan to more than double the size of the present library and more than triple the number of books. But one of the most exciting features of the new library is the proposed children’s section that will be open to area school children and will encourage them to come and use the library, to help foster an attitude and aptitude for reading from the earliest age. It is a beginning in developing a culture of reading.