Indonesians are lazy readers and writers

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesians are among the laziest readers and writers in the world, according to a senior official of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Zainal Arifin Achmady, the Director General for Basic and Intermediate Education, added that the rapid development of information technology is not helping either.

It is therefore up to parents and teachers to encourage their children to pick up reading and writing habits, Zainal said to the Antara news agency.

Citing an international survey, he said the habit of writing in Indonesia is among the lowest in the world.

Indonesia ranked second from the bottom in a critical reading contest, he said without giving details of the contest.

He said the rapid development in telecommunications technology has meant that Indonesians prefer to communicate with one another by phone. "This is at the expense of writing or reading because using the phone is more efficient and faster."

Teachers hold the crucial key in motivating their students to pick up the habit of reading and writing, and even to make it part of national culture, he said. Parents should join in the endeavor because children spend a large portion of their time at home.

To encourage reading and writing, the Ministry of Education and Culture plans to launch "The Year of Writing Letters" in 1995.

The campaign is hoping that every Indonesian citizen will write at least 50 letters a year.

Currently, the national post office handles about 500 million letters a year, which means that on average, an Indonesian only writes 2.5 letters a year, he said.

The post office, he pointed out, is making all the necessary field preparations in anticipation of this campaign such as setting up more letter boxes, including at schools, and more airplanes to send letters to various parts of the archipelago, including the remotest regions, he added. (emb)