By: Lesley Ann M. Liquiran
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously disturbed our daily operations. Moreover, it has closed the educational institutions that resulted in distance learning.
Nonetheless, the pandemic has not hampered the educational provision for Filipino learners. The learners have received the components of learning that involved reading, writing, understanding, analyzing, and evaluating through the guidance of their parents and their teachers. These mechanisms have completed the academic development of the learners.
For those premises, we are proud that this reading conference prospers because of the rigorous effort of the teachers, the staff and personnel, and everyone.
Reading books and other scholarly articles offers various benefits. It ranges from the idea that it stimulates the cognitive mental activity of the reader. It also enhances one’s imagination and kindles the virtue of empathy. A popular notion about reading is that it fuels the mind with information and ideas that eventually form knowledge. This activity serves as an opportunity for further thought leading to new ideas.
However, in this digital era that timewasters are prevalent, indulgence in different social media has obliterated the value of reading. Kids prefer gadgets over books, which depicts the vast influence of technology on people. Regardless of the social milieu, I urge everyone to embrace the joy and love for reading. Truest in its sense, reading renders a great extent of gain for an individual.
According to studies, reading is crucial to student’s or learner’s cognitive development. At a young age, kids should be familiar with reading books. Why? Because there is a famous concept in education that children “tabula rasa” or a clean slate. It is the state of the human mind before knowledge imprints. Through the illustration, it prompts implications on how people should value reading.
Learners are encouraged to develop your reading habits as you set aside a portion of your time for it. Through this, reading fills your mind with information. The information scaffolds the knowledge building that enables you to discern facts in the world that information falsity is rampant. Most importantly, it helps you in your studies because reading has advanced you already in information acquisition. It has already trained you mentally to process data.
On the other hand, the teacher should also grip the attitude towards reading. Reading allows teachers to become knowledge reservoirs of which information overflows from them. He can
effectively contribute to developing his workplace and work system better through research and innovation projects, which are the academic trends nowadays. Hence, it fulfills his aspiration as a teacher.
Also, being in the government office, it is crucial to engage ourselves in dynamic reading. Reading empowers us to develop plans and scheme systems based on studies and researches that promise effective results for the benefit of the stakeholders.
Indeed, let us adhere to the statement by Francis Bacon that reading makes a full man, conference makes a ready man, and writing makes a concise man.