Going by the book

By Suchada Tupchai

Thailand has celebrated National Children’s Day at the invitation of the International Children’s Welfare Organization of the United Nations since 1955 in order to let the public realize the needs and importance of children, help children participate in society and eventually take responsibility for the country. The first slogan for children spoken by a prime minister was in 1956 by Field Marshal Pipulsongkram, Thailand’s third prime minister: “Give your all to the benefit of others and society”. The slogan was spoken at the time when the Thai personality was fixed officially as “Thailand values children, women and the elderly”. This is what has supported the future of the nation from past to present.
This year Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra used a strategically short slogan designed to reach children directly and ignoring the previous slogan almost totally. “Clever children must be readers and thinkers” has been devised to encourage Thai children to read and think in order to develop their long-term intellectual potential. The idea is for Thai children to become knowledge seekers, and the prime minister has expressed his hope that every child should own a notebook computer.
It is a well-known fact that Thai children are far away from books and spend most of their time playing in a world of technology. Many youngsters are obsessed with electronic games. Yet dependency on computers, even the notebook kind, can itself be regarded as a shortcut to learning, educating children from the youngest level to believe all knowledge can be drawn up at the press of a computer key. This is not the real path to knowledge. Shouldn’t the government instead emphasize learning from reading books?
Today the highly developed countries like America, Japan and large parts of Europe still place emphasis on book reading. We see their people carrying out their daily activities against a background of books. There is a genuine culture of reading. The government should be thinking about what it can do to encourage Thai children to read. How can teachers pass this notion on to children, encouraging them to develop their minds through reading and not only materially? Stepping backwards into a culture of development rather than forwards into an electronic world isn’t wrong in the creation of good youth, the future brains of the country.
Clever children read. Intelligence does not materialise on a computer screen. Reading means mental stimulation, the ability to absorb the ideas of others and to analyse, reflect, and think. There is no substitute for a good book.