by The Oriflamme
How many of us are aware that November is the National Reading Month in the Philippines? Probably not a lot. A lot of people seem to think that reading books is a ‘trend’ that has already been past its prime. First of all, it was never a trend and no, not all things has to be ‘in season’ for it to matter.
Many studies have shown that most of the successful people in the world are good readers. It is important for every person to develop a reading habit. Reading enriches the brain and lets a person discover new things.
Man's thirst for knowledge should be insatiable. Learning is a constant process and knowledge is the prize of learning. We eat to nourish the body, we read to sharpen the mind.
Reading is the most essential part when it comes to learning. And by reading, I don’t mean purely educational books. Some people seem to think that you only learn through reading books about Math, Science, and History; but that couldn’t be less untrue. Here’s a secret: there are things you learn through educational books, and those things are skills in math and science, and you learn about history or medicine or logic; and there are things that can’t be dictated by education and those things include your own thoughts/opinions about issues like equality and racism. It helps in forming a man's point of view. Those things you don’t learn from reading a math book, you learn those from reading stories about people who have experienced it once or who are doing it to others; you learn it through reading even literary accounts of those issues.
We can find the solutions to our everyday life problems in books—even in fictional books. Books can be considered as our lifelong companions which can offer us all sorts of advices and secrets to life’s mysteries. We don’t just read books for enjoyment; we read to widen our vocabulary, open our minds, unleash our creativity, and put those developed abilities to good use.
It is not the kind or genre of the book that this reading awareness celebration wanted us to focus on but the importance of spending or lending some time to read because people today are more on the visuals and not into letters and words. They read but only from headlines or the first paragraph or page then they try to visualize what will happen in the story instead of just actually reading it.
Here’s another secret: If you read what everyone is reading, you begin to think like everyone. And not everyone is right; being in the majority doesn’t mean you’re right. There are banned books: books that were deemed too mature (content-wise) for their target audience. Why is the world so afraid of the younger generation knowing about things?
Do you remember that time in history class when you learned about the burning of the library at Alexandria? Do you remember about the books that were destroyed by colonizers at about every other place in the world? Why do you think they did that? Because books give us knowledge, and they are afraid of people who are knowledgeable of things; be it about medicine or your own opinions on things. They can’t handle us having our own opinions because they can’t control us when we have our own opinions.
And that’s why reading matters; we don’t just accept the facts they give us, we challenge them and we believe what we think is right.
Many studies have shown that most of the successful people in the world are good readers. It is important for every person to develop a reading habit. Reading enriches the brain and lets a person discover new things.
Man's thirst for knowledge should be insatiable. Learning is a constant process and knowledge is the prize of learning. We eat to nourish the body, we read to sharpen the mind.
Reading is the most essential part when it comes to learning. And by reading, I don’t mean purely educational books. Some people seem to think that you only learn through reading books about Math, Science, and History; but that couldn’t be less untrue. Here’s a secret: there are things you learn through educational books, and those things are skills in math and science, and you learn about history or medicine or logic; and there are things that can’t be dictated by education and those things include your own thoughts/opinions about issues like equality and racism. It helps in forming a man's point of view. Those things you don’t learn from reading a math book, you learn those from reading stories about people who have experienced it once or who are doing it to others; you learn it through reading even literary accounts of those issues.
We can find the solutions to our everyday life problems in books—even in fictional books. Books can be considered as our lifelong companions which can offer us all sorts of advices and secrets to life’s mysteries. We don’t just read books for enjoyment; we read to widen our vocabulary, open our minds, unleash our creativity, and put those developed abilities to good use.
It is not the kind or genre of the book that this reading awareness celebration wanted us to focus on but the importance of spending or lending some time to read because people today are more on the visuals and not into letters and words. They read but only from headlines or the first paragraph or page then they try to visualize what will happen in the story instead of just actually reading it.
Here’s another secret: If you read what everyone is reading, you begin to think like everyone. And not everyone is right; being in the majority doesn’t mean you’re right. There are banned books: books that were deemed too mature (content-wise) for their target audience. Why is the world so afraid of the younger generation knowing about things?
Do you remember that time in history class when you learned about the burning of the library at Alexandria? Do you remember about the books that were destroyed by colonizers at about every other place in the world? Why do you think they did that? Because books give us knowledge, and they are afraid of people who are knowledgeable of things; be it about medicine or your own opinions on things. They can’t handle us having our own opinions because they can’t control us when we have our own opinions.
And that’s why reading matters; we don’t just accept the facts they give us, we challenge them and we believe what we think is right.