Indonesians are lazy readers and writers

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)