Why don't boys read?

(A version of this story appeared in the Malay Mail on the 28^th of August)

This question resurfaces every now and then and, lately, has been the subject of much internet stories -- the first one in the Wall Street Journal and the other in the Timesonline. They read texted messages; they read games instruction manuals and football magazines, so it is not like they are illiterate. Publishers in America claim to have found one solution: gross them out. That's right, give them what they want and they will read. So 261 titles aimed at boys was released in 2007, from the gory (Vlad the Impaler: the real Count Dracula, Leopold II: Butcher of the Congo and Mary Tudor: Courageous Queen or Bloody Mary?) to gross (Captain Underpants, Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, and The Day My Butt Went Psycho). Says John Hechinger of the WSJ, 'Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys -- many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open Little House on the Prairie. Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate.'

I think of my own reading when I was a kid. By the time I was ten, I had read every Enid Blyton I had set my sights on (I don't know how many, but surely over fifty) after finishing all the bridged and illustrated classics (Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, Ivanhoe, etc, etc). At eleven years old, I added Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne and HG Wells to the menu. From twelve to thirteen, I must have read every Agatha Cristie, Leslie Charteris (The Saint) and Earl Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) book published. I won't say what I was reading when I was fourteen because I am afraid you might call my mother.

In Malaysia I guess the question would be, 'Why don't people read?' (Before we go further, let me assure you that we did have television when I was young. I'm not that old. In fact, the number of books sold worlwide has increased many fold despite television and the internet.) There is a story I'd like to relate. It was during the early years of Silverfish Books. There was his lady, one of those teacher types with thick black plastic-rimmed glasses and tight hair bun, who came into the shop asking for workbooks, in particular on a Malaysian author whose work had just been added to the Form Five English curriculum. I told her that we didn't sell workbooks. Besides, since the inclusion of this author was recent, there was not likely to be workbooks anywhere.

'Oh dear,' she said. 'Does that mean I will have to read the book?'

Gobsmacked doesn't begin to describe my reaction.

'Malaysians read two books a year'. I have been hearing this for almost ten years, with no other details -- sample size, demography, what kind of questions were asked, what was included, not included, nothing. Frankly, I don't believe the figure. I think the situation is far worse and whoever put out the number is trying not to make us look less bad than we are. (If the number is correct, we should be importing some 50 million books a year. Are we?)

I was at the Dataran Merdeka once, about a year ago, at about six-thirty in the evening. We were early for the show at the Town Hall, so I persuaded my wife to take a walk to the KL City Library on the other side. Of course, it was closed. What was I thinking? That is the absurdity of the situation: the only time people can go to a library is after school or work, but they are closed. It is bad enough we have so few libraries to start with. (When I was growing up in JB, I had three libraries to choose from: the one in school, the town library next to the post office, and the National Library in Singapore.) And, building humungous library in places people have no access to, does not exactly help.

Okay, not every teacher is as bad as the one I described above. Some are worse. But, I would like to propose another survey. How many teachers actually read the books they have to teach? How many read anything apart from what they have to teach? (Include tertiary level.) How many library employees read? How many employees of Dewan Bahasa read?

I hear parents complaining about their children all the time. Sometimes, when I am feeling jahat, I will ask them what type of books they read. It is a lot like the Malay proverb about the crab teaching his son to walk straight. But it is not their fault entirely, not with our education system that makes the Ford Model T assembly line look modern. To read, one has to have some competency in a language, at least the ability to write one's name. And the books must be fun. So, there.

(Psst. The books I was reading at fourteen were so much fun that I had to pass them under the desks in school.)