My Singaporean students do not read books. And it’s a problem.
As a Professor at Nanyang Technological University, I teach in one of the most research-intensive Universities in Asia. We have outstanding library facilities. Our library keeps more than a million print books on the shelves. Within our sprawling campus, we have seven libraries.
Singapore itself has some of the most amazing libraries I have seen. A law was even passed recently to allow users to borrow up to 32 books each time.
Singapore is also a nation that prides itself in having extremely high literacy rates. According to a recent study, Singapore’s Primary 4 pupils have emerged as the top readers in the world.
Orchard Library. Right in the middle of the city.
Orchard Library. Right in the middle of the city.
It is always a surprise then, every year, during admissions interviews, when I ask “what is the last book you read and what was it about?”.
The question generally draws a blank.
I like to ask this question because students do not expect it. There are tons of resources online where they can glean the kinds of interview questions they will get. But, in this case they cannot rely on a rehearsed answer.
The question also betrays my confusion: despite Singapore’s abundance of accessible libraries and its high literacy rates, how come most of my students, by the time they reach University, have not engaged in book reading for a considerable period of time?
Photo by Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash
Entering University without reading books
There is something that happens to my students during their formative years, before University. While many of them avidly read books during their primary school years, they seem to drop the reading habit, progressively, in secondary schools. This is consistent with the results from a recent study of Singaporean teenagers that quote students like this one:
I remember I used to love reading books when I was younger. I have loads of storybooks. As I got older, I have a lot of schoolwork and I just stopped reading (student in secondary 3)
Students in secondary schools tend to be bombarded with school work and exams and have little time to read for leisure or pleasure. In addition, while the proportion of primary school kids having a phone is growing, this is even more the case for secondary school students:
Honestly, I think last time in Primary School, I didn’t have a phone, so I read because I want to kill time and stuff. Now, I mostly use my phone to do that (student in secondary 3)
There is evidence that this trend of no longer reading books in secondary school is intensified in junior colleges, where the emphasis is mostly on achieving grades for entry into university. For example, one of my colleagues told me about her experience at a junior college in Singapore, just before entering University:
I stopped reading books one month after entering JC. There was a very brief period where I picked up books again in my second year, when the Twilight series was popular. I read all books within a week, then I got reminded by the reality that it was not a productive use of my time, and that I should be studying (a former JC student).
I teach students who have gone through 15 years of gruelling tests, tutoring, and homework.
Yet I always feel a sense of disappointment when I have them in front of me in my classes and they struggle to remember books they have read. Any book.
There are at least two main reasons why my students miss out on something really important if they do not read books: 1) the ability to develop and sustain attention; 2) the ability to acquire the cultural capital they need for a successful career.
A muscle they cannot see: attention
I have a teenage son at home who loves going to the gym. I love the fact that it gets him out of the house and away from screens.
I also have an ambivalent relationship with gyms, especially when I think about the fact that some of the most popular fitness equipment was originally developed as torture devices.
19th century treadmill
What I tell him though, is that there is an invisible muscle we all need to work on: attention.
Maintaining focus is bound to become increasingly critical for knowledge workers, who rely on high levels of concentration when analysing complex financial data or developing innovative business strategies.
But we are constantly distracted. In addition, the temptation to multitask undermines our ability to focus attention on important tasks. This is especially worrisome given the growing evidence that multitasking leads to more stress and less satisfaction with our lives.
In contrast, reading a book requires sustained concentration, allowing us to exercise our attention muscles.
The invisible ceiling of cultural capital
Many of my students come from less privileged backgrounds than their peers in Universities such as SMU or NUS. In fact many of the students who take my class, are bursaries, who receive support from the government. Many of them have worked very hard, through difficult circumstances, to gain acceptance into our University.
Yet when they reach my class, they often fail to see the importance that social class will continue to impact them.
In a recent book, Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison explore the concept of the “class ceiling,” which refers to the barriers that prevent the social advancement of individuals from lower social classes. In the book they show data on how people in elite jobs from working-class backgrounds earn £6,400 less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds, and ague that this gap cannot be explained in terms of educational background or location alone.
Friedman and Laurison emphasise the importance of cultural capital in understanding this phenomenon, the cultural capital elite students have access to by growing up around people who have cultural capital.
According to Pierre Bourdieu’s definition, cultural capital refers to the knowledge, skills and cultural experiences a person possesses. This includes things like education, language skills, and familiarity with art, music, and literature.
Cultural capital is a valuable asset that helps individuals navigate social situations. However, the uneven distribution of cultural capital reinforces social inequalities and creates barriers for those who lack such resources to achieve upward mobility.
What my students overlook is that cultural capital can play an important role in career advancement. In many professional fields, the possession of cultural capital will give individuals a competitive advantage. Yet because they have lost the habit of reading books, my students have lost one of the main ways of acquiring cultural capital.
So why books?
As mentioned, books and the focus they require are a perfect antidote to the media landscape, the triumph of the shallows, and the lack of focus we all suffer from.
The shallows
For many of my undergraduate students, including the students I just interviewed, reading books can also be a powerful way to acquire the cultural capital they will need to navigate different social networks.
Reading books will help them analyse and interpret information, evaluate arguments, engage in thoughtful discussions, and have more interesting things to say.
Growing up, many of my students did not get many opportunities to travel. Many of them have never left Singapore or Southeast Asia. Yet books offer insights into different cultures, traditions, and perspectives. Books can foster empathy, cultural sensitivity, and help students develop broader worldview.
Singapore has one of the most amazing public library systems in the world. I just hope my students would go back to the library.
