‘Encourage children to make reading a daily habit’
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Smartline Publisher Limited, Mr Elliot Agyare, has called on educators and parents to encourage their children to make reading a daily habit to improve upon their knowledge.
Advertisement
At the launch of an online Scholastic Literary Programme meant to provide children with an opportunity to access over 800 books online last Wednesday in Accra, Mr Agyare said literacy was critical for a nation to build a vibrant economy, stressing that “literacy is critical for effective democratic practice.”
He said without the ability to understand and interrogate basic ideas and policies, people would not be able to make the right choices needed to move a nation forward.
Good working environment
According to Mr Agyare, without adequate knowledge and skills to contribute effectively in a working environment, individuals would remain jobless though there would be employment opportunities, and businesses would struggle to provide services and manage production at competitive rates.
He, therefore, encouraged Ghanaians to make reading a habit as it would go a long way to promote national development.
“Reading is one key way to expand the frontiers of one’s thinking,” he said.
Talking about the Scholastic Literary Programme, which provides item-level adaptive assessment and a personalised book list to maximise students’ reading achievement, the West Africa Manager of Scholastic Inc, Madam Joyce Agyare, said the main objective for the programme was to make books easily accessible to children online.
Good reading materials
She said teachers should assist students by getting them the right kind of reading materials that would be of benefit to them.
Madam Agyare said with the help of the online literary programme, schoolchildren would be able to assess their reading and learn new vocabulary that would help them write and speak good English.
She, therefore, encouraged parents to motivate their children to read books to improve upon their knowledge.
About the Scholastic Literary Programme
It provides seamless, flexible support for areas in the curriculum that are crucial for successful reading, and measures reading comprehension.