Book: Padhne Ki Dahleez Par

Editor: Lata Pandey

Publication: NCERT

Price: Rs. 35

Pages: 62

This book is a collection of ten articles on reading. What is the meaning of reading? Are our children today learning to read or are they just learning to recognize the letters? And if they are only recognizing the letters, then what is the solution? What can we do to solve this problem? The articles in this book revolve around these issues.

What is Reading?

Imagine a child reading the line “बरसात आने वाली थी। शांति अभी घर नहीं आई थी।“ like this “बस का ब रस्सी का र सरोते का स उसमें आ का डंडा फिर तकली का त बना ब.. र..सा..त।“

Now, if the child is taking this much time to read one word, imagine the time he would take to read the sentence, and then the paragraph. Do you think a child’s working memory will work for so long and the child would be able to understand the meaning of this line? Do you think that this child is learning to read properly? According to Sharda Kumari, the child is not learning to read. She says that reading is not only about recognizing what is written on the paper, but also about comprehending what is written. When we focus on the small unit or entity, it gets difficult for our mind to understand the meaning of what is written.

How to teach children to read

But this is how children are taught reading in the schools. What is the other way to teach reading if not this? The answer to this question is given by Shobha Sinha in her article “ Shuruati padhai ka ek Vaekalpik Raasta.” According to the author, our language education is based on phonetics. We first teach our children to learn the sound of the letter, for example, the sound of ‘a,’ ‘aa’ etc. We expect them to learn the sound first then combine the letters with their respective sounds, and then they will understand the meaning of the word and then they will comprehend the meaning of the sentence. But this becomes too much of hard work for children.

The problem with our way of teaching is that we make the reading a meaningless activity. For a child, there is no meaning in the sound ‘b’ but there is a meaning in the sentence “बरसात आने वाली थी। शांति अभी घर नहीं आई थी।“

How can we expect a child to get interested in reading if we are taking away the meaning from it? But the question remains there. What is the alternate way to teach children reading? The answer is emergent literacy. In this alternative way, we not only motivate children to read books, but also make reading interesting for them. We include stories and books with pictures so that children will start seeing meaning in the books and the words written in them. There are interactive stories on which teachers and students have discussions. We want to bring back the meaning to reading again.

How can we do that in schools? The answer to this question is in the next article, an excerpt from the book ‘The Under Achieving School’ written by John Holt. “Bacchon me padhne ke prati nafrat paeda karna,” in this article the author has talked about how in schools we force children to look for Dictionary every time they find a difficult word in the book they are reading. But think about it, how many times do we see the dictionary while reading? How do we understand the meaning of difficult words? We understand the meaning by looking at its different usage in the sentences, we don’t look for its meaning in the dictionary because we find it tedious. This habit of asking children to look for word meanings discourage them to read books.

We assume that children want to read books with easy language only, but if given a chance they would also pick up books with difficult words too and try their best to read them. All we have to do is to motivate them to read for fun. We don’t have to ask questions about what they have read or what they learnt from it, no questions at all, let children read for fun. Moreover, they should be given the freedom to leave the book if they are not enjoying it.

Freedom, this is what is missing in our way. We tell children what to read, how to read, ask them continuously what have they read, what have they learnt, but we forget that at the end of the day reading is all about fun. If we won’t ask them to read for fun at an early age, how can we expect children to read, learn and educate themselves when they grow?

In this article, the author has also talked about some of the activities which he used in his classes to motivate children to write.

How to motivate children to read

What else can we do to motivate children to read? In her article “Bacchon ko dein padhne ka samridh vatavaran,” the author Lata Pandey has said that being able to read is a matter of pride for children. While the play is their natural leaning, reading is their natural yearning. They take words as pictures, if they will see a picture again and again they will eventually learn to read it. So this means if we provide them with an environment where there are meaningful pictures, children can learn to read in a better way. But what is the right environment? An environment where there are interesting things written on the walls, not some moral values. There are libraries for children, and they are given the freedom to choose books, even if they don’t know how to read yet. They are allowed to see the words, the pictures in these books.

How to find out good books for children

Now that we know the importance of libraries, we should also think about what kind of books should be there in the libraries. This is what the next article, ‘Kya-kya ho bacchon ki ek kitaab mein’ written by Kamlesh Chandra Joshi has talked about. In this article, he has mentioned the parameters on which the books for children should be assessed. There are factors like language; stories in which there are some rhyming lines interest children more. Similarly, books with pictures which are showing some movement and are not still, books in which child characters and non-living things having their own individuality and freedom are more interesting for children. The article has not only talked about the parameters but has also given the examples of books along with the parameters.

There is another article written by Kamlesh Joshi, ‘Chitratmak Pustakein- Bacchon ke saath anubhav aur Tippiniyan,’ in this article author has talked about how to use graphical and pictorial books effectively. It is important to have discussions in the beginning otherwise children will only look at these pictures and won’t be able to make any connection between them.

Now that we know what kind of books should be there in the library, the book has also talked about how libraries should be incorporated in the schools. In the article, ‘Pustakein Padhein, Aage Badhein,’ written by V.V.Singh, the author has talked about how we can take help of children in deciding books which they would want to have in the library, and how we can make them responsible in taking care of them.

Padhne Ki Dahleez Par

This book has intensively talked about the meaning of reading and how we can effectively teach children to ‘read’ in our schools. The book is not only about the problems we are facing but is trying its best to offer solutions to these problems. In the end, there is a story ‘Ashok ki Kahani’ written by Krishna Kumar. In this story, Ashok wanted to learn but he could not, because he lost interest in learning. Despite many efforts and years, he turned his steps back. The editor Lata Pandey leaves us with the pondering thought that children want to read, once a child learns to read, there is no end to what he can learn, but we are doing something wrong. We are not providing them with the love and trust they need to learn, and unconsciously we ask them to return from the threshold of reading.

If you are looking forward to reading more books related to children then give this post a read which is the review of the book ‘Escape from childhood‘ written by John Holt.

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