I was asked for advice by a friend of mine who is a school teacher and wants to inculcate an interest in reading and writing in young children at her school and in several other nearby schools. Idea seemed very revolutionary. But who will take the responsibility of telling their parents who know the condition: that millions that are born, grow and get old and die without getting an opportunity to get a dignified job? Now education is not to get educated but to get degree that fetches fat salary.

Literature is out of contest. Who wants to waste time on things like this? Who wants to come into a fuss about what literature can do for human? Most of parents have hardly ever liked to meet any writer in their life. If they find a famous one then they get clicked a picture, post on social media and the rest leave for journalist to scribe in their interview column.

In most colleges and universities in the name of education especially in literature professors are trying to just pass their time, somehow complete their syllabus and get fat salary and gossip around and pass time in engaging in work politics.

In such a society who can think that one day any one will like to think about inculcating an idea of teaching reading and writing for school going kids. At first this idea really sounded hopeless and I suggested her don’t burden yourself with such thoughts. If everything goes well, school will get the benefit and the next year school fee will go higher. If something goes wrong your job will be at stake.

… But I find her serious at her decision. She wants to start a literary club; she wants my support and suggestion to implement it on the ground level.

The most important thing to understand is that nobody wants to study. School going kids are piled with a lot of pressure over their head. Study has become a dragon that has fire and flames and from childhood they learn to be fearful of this dragon-like study.

First, it is very important to motivate them to love study and not find it like a dragon. Then let them get into a habit of reading and automatically the power of written communication will increase. They will learn to write slowly but reading habit is a must. Writing takes a little extra time but it comes gradually.

Let start with a class: we can easily find that in every class there are many students who are called back benchers and have less interest in study. Motivate them and breeze this motivational and knowledge gap into them. In each class you can find some students, who are interested to learn new things. Churn out first these students and then the next and the next. This way you will get increasing number of students which will be a motivating factor for you as well.

It is also important to motivate them to work as a team. Give some students to read some books or novels and then ask them to write their opinion on that novel. After that give that review page to other students to edit and then to others to design so the final product is very eye catching and every student gets equal level of involvement and creativity to show.

It is also good idea to have some writing activity and competition in the school and motivate everyone to participate and learn something.

It is very important to start somewhere and get ready to bear the pain and start a good environment for real education and not for just crazy fight for degrees.