21/05/2025
EDUCATION WITHOUT READING
"Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary"
From the onset, man has always desired to know. This keenness has birthed approaches and methodologies for acquiring knowledge. Man’s quest for knowledge led to the adoption of the term education as the best tool for learning. In the early stages, there was informal education. It could be described as what we now call apprenticeship, where the student learns directly from the master by following him around—watching and listening to what the master is doing and saying. Through this means, many of the old philosophers and scientists were educated, and they propounded theories that have become references in our time.
As time went on, and with the advent of civilization, man discovered writing and reading. This brought about a system of preservation and transfer of knowledge discovered and proven by scholars, to be used by subsequent generations in their pursuit of knowledge and understanding of certain life occurrences. This system of education led to the organization of learning with targets and goals. It progressed in stages, helping the human person discover human structure, environmental content, and how to find fulfillment by understanding oneself and the environment. Books then became a major tool of education, used both in schools and personally. Knowledge propositions and discoveries were preserved and disseminated through them. In this way, people were provided with details of inventions, experiences, and past occurrences to aid them in their quest for knowledge and solutions to life’s issues, as well as human development.
With the understanding of the above, it becomes imperative that to know or acquire knowledge, one must read the contents of other people’s preserved discoveries in order to draw a lead in one’s desire to form an opinion about certain life situations. For this reason, reading becomes a vital aspect of education and human development.
In this technological age, many people—especially in the Western world—have educated themselves without formal schooling, by availing themselves of opportunities to read, either from printed materials or the internet. Among this category of people, many have become vast in knowledge, and some have even gone on to become inventors of certain information or theories that have become relevant to learning. This places reading as a powerful and evolving dimension of education.
In the Nigerian case, many have limited reading to being necessary only for academic purposes. As a result, our reading culture has been weakened—limiting our knowledge acquisition and self-development. The developmental thinking abilities of people have been affected by this, and creativity has declined.
Due to the high percentage of poor reading culture, the knowledge base has become low in terms of economic development, since information is a key substance that provides business opportunities and drives growth. Moreover, it has contributed to the increase in the poverty rate in our nation, due to the high level of ignorance among Nigerians, including even those who went to school. It has also negatively affected business, stemming from a lack of innovation—which often results from a poorly expanded mind caused by a lack of information. This is also one of the factors affecting job creation, as many graduates are produced without basic knowledge of life growth principles.
It therefore becomes very necessary that programmes and systems be put in place to encourage reading among the citizens of Nigeria, especially the youths. Reviving and strengthening the reading culture is essential not only for academic success but also for national development, innovation, and personal growth. A nation that reads is a nation that leads—and the future of Nigeria depends on how well we equip our people with the habit and hunger for knowledge through reading and its transformational application.
