KOCHI: At a time when reading is losing its charm and the world is hooked onto visual media rather than books, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom, recently did their bit to promote the habit of reading books among children.The event was held under the school’s ‘Drop Everything And Read’ (D. E. A. R.) campaign organised by the school’s Readers’ Club.
DEAR, the whole school mass reading programme was formally inaugurated in the school assembly by principal S Ajayakumar. The event began with a bell, alerting everyone to leave aside everything they were doing and start reading, exclusively for the following 30 minutes. They were free to read anything, but not textbooks. The occasion saw all the school students engrossed for the next half an hour, absorbed in their own world of books. The Readers’ Club volunteers also distributed some specially prepared reading materials to everyone.
The DEAR campaign was conceived to instill reading habits among the students and staff members and make the whole school read, said S L Faisal, librarian and coordinator of the programme. The event has been around for five years now and he believes it has been a successful initiative. “Older students read more books, whereas primary school students do not have much access to books other than those related to their academic subjects. The main concept of this campaign is to instill the habit of reading in them as well, encouraging them to read along with everyone else.”