Indonesia reading interest still low, need a break

I am interested in this topic because as a novel reader, I am curious about the state of novel in Indonesia. Last Christmas, I read a novel and suddenly thought of picking this as my english presentation topic. I searched the internet and found out that Indonesia interest in reading, especially kids, are very low. The data from UNESCO showed only 0.01 percent indonesia kids love to read. In other words, from 10.000 children, only one love to read.

This is written in rappler.com on September 8 2015 by Febriana Firdaus. It is said that ‘Kantor Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia’ has recorded 90 percent of the population over the age of ten years old like to watch television, but doesn’t like to read book. Compared to developed countries, Indonesian are more interested in other activities like watching than reading novel. Additionally, Okky Madasari, an Indonesia novelist, said that reading isn’t a part of indonesia culture. The people wasn’t taught to enjoy reading, they just adapted themselvesto memorize and follow what their teacher said. At the same time, Tv grabs everyone attention and makes  books not interesting. This clearly affect the problem that currently happened in Indonesia. Sarasdewi, An indonesia university lecturer, said that she saw school as the biggest institutions that have the biggest role to stimulate the reading interest of students. In my opinion, I think that parents contributed the most to the liking of reading. Children like to imitate their looked-up figures, which are parents. But, some parents didn’t use this chance and futhermore, there are parents that left their children for work and didn’t spent enough time for their child. The time children spent at home are mostly used for electronic devices like gadget and television. These kind of entertaiment are very liked by many children, even to adult. In 24 hours, they can spent many hours in front of the screen which are very bad for their eyes and make reading feel boring, reading is no fun. Thus, their impression about books are bad.

I also thinks Indonesian love instant things so much that they became lazier and just want the summary instead of reading the whole text. This kind of thinking is dangerous because sloth is a very bad thing. Laziness leads to ignorance, many people said lacks of information is bad. No matter what, reading is a good way to fulfill the hole in our knowledge.

One of the most common problem in students life is time. Not just in Indonesia, but all over the world. The lacks of time affect  students life at home. They won’t have time to read books like novel if they arrived at  home late. With a worn out mind and body, they still had to study for tommorow tests or doing homework or both. After these, they will go to sleep and won’t read books except maybe some students read it for a little while.

Additionally, in some places like countryside, library and book store aren’t build. Even if there are, the building lacks of books in quantity and quality. There is a famous saying’ Book is the world window’, it is very true. The only downside is it doesn’t give an immediate effect, it takes a considerable of time and effort to start getting the reward.

Our surrounding also affect a significant amount of our habit. Indirectly, enviroment affect our habit, for example friends that like to go to mall or hangout, family that don’t like to read, and many more.

In this era, the most popular creation is internet. Internet created online games and social media which resembled addicitive drugs. From child to adult, it isn’t just a small portion of them that like to play online games and social media. For every leisure time, they use it to play their favourite online games. This addcition will lead them to focus on game and neglect reading books and interaction. Social media also the same, sometimes it make people forget that reading book also serves as an entertaiment to relieve pent-up stress.

The last one is your own self. It is our very own will that we do things that we love to without forced by other people. If we don’t have an interest in reading book, it will make us feel bored.

In my experience, i used to hate reading. Reading wasn’t fun, it consumed lots of time compared to waching movie, especially the novel adapted one. We also had to imagine it when the movie could showed us right away. I used to had this thought until  i read a novel. It showed more expression,a much more focused subplot than the movie. It also express things that couldn’t be filmed.This is the power of words. It created unique ways to introduce the character, the description of the place, and incident that happened. The impact of words couldn’t be compared to movie when we imagined it with our head. Only words that can make this happened. While the film relied on vision and sound, novel relied on words to charm their audiences. When i watched a film that adapted from novel for the first time, i felt it was pretty good. I searched the internet about it and found many comments said’ the novel is better than the movie because .... . So, I decided to read the novel and found out that many parts were skipped, some good parts weren’t included, and some little parts that could make the adaptation better.

To solve Indonesian reading interest, it isn’’t an easy job. According to Okky Madasari, the access to books are very limited. The only way to solve this is by built many more good qualities libraries in many places so the access to books are bound free. She also said that the education system doesn’t support the interest in reading books like novel and it must be improved to make sure that students don’t think reading is just to memorize.

In my opinion, parents should give children illustrated books and spent their time together to read it. When they are still little, they are most likely to be influenced by their parents activities. Using this chance, the  child will naturally grow up to like it because of good impression and memory they have. However, the impression must be protected because children easily changed their mind.

I also think that instead of waiting for it to be filmed like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Sherlock Holmes and many more, they could just read it directly from the novel. The process of creating film is very long, and it based on the novel, which means it will only be filmed after a long time. If you are excited and curious about the next series, you should just read it. It is much better than having to wait. You won’t regret it.

The conclusion I could draw after writing this is that Indonesia education system still have lots of rooms for improvement. The kids childhood is the most vulnerable period to plant a reading interest in their mind. Children have a very big curiosity compared to most adult and their growth is better. If Indonesia education system is better, then the interest in reading will spike up. But then, it is up to our ownself to grow this interest.