Preserving Our Literary Heritage

The Gift of Reading 1

All my current and past projects over the last two decades are/were designed (1) to offer the gift of reading to all and sundry and (2) to elicit the help of relevant stakeholders buying into this concept. Revisiting this idea was prompted by the slogans used by the Ministry of Education, Guyana, during Education Month and during International Literacy Day which were to ‘drop everything and read’ moment and ‘give a book’ day.Of course, there are many other reasons for revisiting my pet please (more in subsequent articles). But first, some comments from persons who have tasted the power and pleasure of reading:

Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald
MARTIN CARTER
MARTIN CARTER

Martin Carter:
In 1966, Martin Carter, wrote an article titled, ‘Of Books and Citizens’, wherein he said, ‘The availability of books…makes it possible, at least, for the son of a sugar worker to acquaint himself with the thoughts and experiences of men and women in other times and other countries. And the opportunity to meet and talk and enter into debate which the community centres provide, serves to deepen understanding and sharpen criticism. The end result of these processes is the enrichment of the individual personality and ultimately, the enrichment of the community’.

Ian McDonald:
‘One of the things when you read, when you read something that impresses you, automatically your mind tries to assess and analyse why this is making such an impression. And part of that process, then, leads into saying let me see how this writer is trying to impress me – what he is trying to say and how he is going about it.
So the writing came from the reading.
If you want to write, whether you want to write professionally or if you just want to learn to write well, for the sake of writing well and that in its own right, is a good thing to want to write well, to want to express yourself clearly and logically is a very great gift quite apart from writing professionally. But if you want to do that, undoubtedly part of that is reading. Reading has to come first and reading has to be a continuous part of the process. I don’t think there is any writer, any good writer that has not been a great reader as well. Reading is an essential part of the whole business of creating work of your own.’

Dale Bisnauth:
‘I will begin by saying that literacy must be seen in the context of education and I don’t think anyone would doubt the value of education to the development of the country. If

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Dr DALE BISNAUTH

education is to be of any importance at all, it must be of economic importance to the country.

TERENCE ROBERTS
TERENCE ROBERTS

And I think that education is extremely important also for social cohesion. Now without literacy, without being able to read and write, we can’t develop our imagination. We are poorer as a people for that. So I think the quality and tone of society really depend in large measures on our people being literate.
Now, I think, where we don’t have that mobility then we will have trouble later on.
I, myself, I like to say, I am a living testimony as to the usefulness of literacy. I didn’t go to secondary school but today I hold a Ph. D. How did I come by my education? I literally read out the school library, I read out the libraries of all my teachers at the primary level, and I read my way to an education.
I really can’t imagine how people can do without reading, I can’t imagine how impoverish the world must be if they [the people] can’t read.’

Terence Roberts:
[In my days,] Guyana was beautiful because you had the books, brand new books simultaneously with the films so all these things helped that generation with deep comprehension, slow comprehension.
Your parents/teachers cannot teach you everything. Education is beyond family and beyond school. School is the preparation for true education.

Founder of the School, Andrew Carnegie
Founder of the School, Andrew Carnegie

In the Humanities – reading fiction and seeing proper films…is the preparation of the human temperament and ability to respond. This is what differentiates between a developed and backwards society.

Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie, (1835-1918), the man who gifted Guyana a National Library, declared, ‘I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because …they only help those who help themselves. They never pauperise…A taste for reading drives out lower tastes’.
Andrew Carnegie was ‘a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the highest profile philanthropists of his era; his 1889 article proclaiming “The Gospel of Wealth” called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and stimulated wave after wave of philanthropy’. [Wikipedia]

In closing, referring to the essay by Carter written in March 1966, ‘A fortnight ago, the Minister of Education in declaring open National Library Week said that while material wealth was stored in banks, intellectual wealth was stored in Libraries and added that both banks and libraries are essential to the progress of the nation’.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com

(By Petamber Persaud)

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