Attachment to reading is important
Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
A seven-year-old boy is sitting on the floor in a North Jakarta bookstore, when his mother, Clara, notices he is reading a comic book: "Oh, Jonathan, don't read that when you are surrounded by other more informative books, like the encyclopedia," she says.
Jonathan continues to read, so engrossed is he in the comic battle between good and evil.
"It's always like this -- he heads straight for the comics, but I wish he'd go for something without pictures," the 41-year- old mother of three said.
Another mother, Yanti, 38, said her six-year-old daughter Maureen loves to read comics.
"She even reads one while she's eating. I don't know what to do with her," said the mother of two.
Both Clara and Yanti said they had desperately tried to wean their children off comics, branding them "useless."
Education expert Azyumardi Azra, however, jumps to the defense of the children.
"It's true that, nowadays, children like to read comic books, but that's fine, so long as the comics are worth reading," said Azyumardi.
He suggested that parents look at the trend from a different point of view.
"The fact that children like to read is the most important thing -- that they develop an attachment to reading," he said.
He asserted that children would probably start to like more informative books when they reached 12 years of age.
Azyumardi, the rector of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, was upbeat, saying that the reading habit among children in the country was encouraging.
"Just go to any bookstore in any shopping mall and you'll see children either standing or sitting on the floor, reading books for hours. It shows that children today like to read," said Azyumardi.
Director General of Informal and Youth Education Fasli Jalal agreed with Azyumardi, saying that encouraging children to read was an integral part of the government's effort to increase the country's literacy rate.
According to the latest data from the Ministry of National Education, of Indonesian's population of over 215 million, 37.4 million people are illiterate. Of those who are illiterate, 18.7 million people are below 10 years of age, 5.9 million between 10 and 44 years of age and 12.8 million above 45 years of age.
The high illiteracy rate has lowered Indonesia's rank in the Human Development Index (HDI) from 110th in 2002, to 112th out of 175 countries surveyed in 2003.
In conjunction with World Literacy Day, which falls on Sept. 1, the government has introduced a National Reading Campaign.
Under the program, the government has allocated approximately Rp 2 billion (US$217,391), of which Rp 1.8 billion will be spent on the provision of books for national libraries across the country.
"The funds will be used to provide national libraries with around 500 packages of books per year. Each package is worth Rp 4 million," said Fasli.
The funds would also be used to maintain the libraries.
"We hope that, through this program, more children will be able to read and, therefore, our illiteracy rate will be lowered," Fasli said.
The government, he added, had planned to increase the funds to Rp 9 billion next year.