We should strengthen reading ability at all levels

Recently, Prof Egara Kabaji expressed concern that Kenyans' reading capacity was weakening. He cited the inability to read long texts and low attention span as evidence of this failing.
“I am worried about the slow thinning of our reading capacity which has considerably affected our imaginative competences,” Kabaji stated in the Literary Discourse column in The Standard on November 29, 2025.
He said policy makers and men of influence must reverse this trend. “We must rethink how we introduce young people to the world of books,” he noted, saying that far from being a punishment, reading was a gateway to imagination, empathy, and self-discovery.

It wasn’t always like this. A large majority of those who had formal education during the colonial era—and education up to class four—mastered literacy and numeracy skills. The mastery enabled those who transitioned to intermediate school—class five to eight—to comfortably undertake the relevant curriculum with least difficulty.

Again, the foundation our primary education experience gave us, continued with secondary education in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, gave us the ability to read grade-level books without difficulty either.

Grade level is education jargon for categorising books based on their difficulty. The idea is for children to find texts that are neither too easy nor too challenging. Each grade—Grade 1 to Grade 12—has books of increasing complexity in vocabulary, syntax, semantics, and content knowledge.

Reading proficiency means the ability to interpret text and make meaning or comprehend the text at the right grade. Inability to read and understand text, say of Grade Six when a learner is in Grade Six, is ominous. It means one is behind his proficient reading level and may not compensate for the deficiency as he moves up the ladder, unless an intervention is made.

The important thing was reading proficiency and the rigour of the texts. What is this business of excelling in speaking but being subnormal in reading proficiency? You have students in Form One who can't read Achebe's Things Fall Apart. It is a bad augury to be seven but unable to read Barbara Kimenye’s Moses series—books that were the high point of reading in primary school in the 70s and 80s.

Prof Henry Indangasi has always said he first read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina while in Form Two at Friends School, Kamusinga. Some people, mostly in their 60s, sneeringly ask: "So what?"

They obviously miss his point or the import of his remarks. Indangasi is saying that the standards of education, the curriculum, initial teacher education and training, and curriculum materials—both prescribed and those available in school libraries—were rigorous.

Today, you cannot find Achebe's Things Fall Apart or Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between, Shakespeare’s works, or the Britannica Encyclopedia in school libraries. And it is business as usual. Nobody sees anything wrong with this scheme of things.

Some of us have argued that these books are outdated, that they are colonial, that they are not part of the syllabus. We, the adults, have not only expunged them from school libraries but have also replaced them with textbooks. We have also ensured that they don’t appear as set books in the KCSE for a long time. What we want is for someone to ban them altogether from the school system.

Two doctorate degree holders even questioned the relevance of not just classical works in the educational system; they also said Achebe, Ngugi, and the works of pioneer African writers are similarly outdated.

Can we truly blame the young generation for their aversion to reading when the highly educated disparage books of outstanding cultural and intellectual heritage? Aren't we, the adults—the people who make decisions that affect them—to blame?

It’s our generation, those born in the late 50s and 60s (still active in universities and politics) and in the 80s, who have eroded the rigorous education foundations those who were born in the 30s and 40s laid for us.

It’s this cohort that prescribes policy in every sphere, including education. They are the ones in charge of literature programmes in the universities. They are the ones in charge of higher institutions of learning. The Senate. Yes, Kenyans who were born in the 50s, 60s, and early 80s.

Universities are responsible for the quality of teachers in secondary and primary schools. It is trendy to talk about digital skills—the basic ability to use a computer confidently, safely, and effectively. Adults have fallen for this also.

However, digital literacy without literacy and numeracy skills undermines one’s ability to optimally take advantage of the capabilities of ICT. The confidence, safety, and effectiveness in the use of digital technology lie in reading fluency. Digital literacy without proficient reading is hot air.

The writer is a Communication Specialist. buhere2003@gmail.com