The reading revolution will be televised

This opinion piece was written by Brij Kothari, faculty of IIM-Ahmedabad and the founder of PlanetRead and BookBox. If you’re interested in writing an opinion piece, take a look at Apolitical’s guide for contributors.

Sami Kumari was able to read two-syllable words in an Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) in Hindi.  She was not able to read short sentences pitched at Grade 1 level, much less, a simple paragraph at Grade 2 level. That would not be a problem, except, she was about to complete Grade 3. Like many of her peers, in a government school in Mordu village in Abu Road, Rajasthan, she was falling behind in reading, one of the most fundamental skills on which almost all learning in school, and access to information in life, depends.

Going by Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER), conducted over a decade, the chances of Sami reading at Grade 2 level (or better), when she finds herself in Grade 5, are not any better than a coin flip.

At the national level in India, that literally means that half of the 150 million children in Grades 1-5 are likely to remain weak readers for the rest of their lives.  They would be counted as “literate” in the census but unable to read simple texts like newspapers. In fact, India already has over half a billion weak readers, desperately in need of a skills upgrade.

"India has over half a billion weak readers, desperately in need of a skills upgrade"

The state of reading skills in India is an emergency that has been seven decades in the making, but is even more poignant in a digital age. Under the Right to Education Act (2009), India has done spectacularly well to bring almost all school-age children into schools, but equally, the schooling system has floundered abysmally on the very purpose for which children came to school.

The schooling system needs a major overhaul through educational policy measures that focus on quality. But that is easier said than accomplished: improving the school system to deliver on minimally functional reading skills is hardly asking for the sky, yet it has proven frustratingly difficult to achieve.

Meanwhile, it’s possible that a national reading skills upgrade could be achieved at scale with a smart leveraging of forces outside of schools, such as the media. Universally, children love to watch cartoons — every time they watch, could they automatically get reading practice, without even realising?

A secret education

Evidence on this question comes from a study with Sami Kumari and over 200 weak-reading village children in three government schools in Rajasthan. The children were individually shown animated stories narrated in Hindi, first with no subtitles and then with the subtitles in Hindi. Every word was highlighted in perfect timing with the narration.

Did the subtitles in the “same” language as the audio – Same Language Subtitling (SLS) – cause the children to engage in reading, unprompted, while watching animated stories? Or did they mostly ignore the SLS? We used an eye-tracker to compare the children’s viewing of the animated stories, with and without SLS. The [study](https://www.planetread.org/pdf/Eye%20Tracking%20Study%20of%20AniBooks%20Draft%20Report%20(June%202018%29.pdf) was supported by USAID, Tata Trusts and its affiliate Centre for microFinance and conducted by PlanetRead.

Sami Kumari and almost all the children, no matter how weak their reading skills, could not but try to read along while watching the animated stories with SLS. The presence of SLS increased the eye-fixations in the SLS band for 94 % of the children. Not surprisingly, children in higher grades read more with SLS but the important observation is that children in all the grades exhibited read-along behaviour.

"The intervention contributed an additional 70% of an entire school year’s achievement in reading score"

Could regular exposure to such content result in better reading skills? This question was explored in a separate study with children in 10 low-income schools in Delhi. Children in half the schools got regular exposure to animated books with SLS, “AniBooks”, over a year-long period as part of regular schooling and children in the other schools did not. The intervention alone contributed an additional 70% of an entire school year’s achievement in reading score.

A simple but powerful conclusion from these and other studies is that children’s media, especially on television, should leverage SLS for reading reinforcement. In India, of the 150 million children in Grades 1-5, an overwhelming majority already watch children’s programs on TV for an average of three hours a day. They could easily get automatic constant reading practice at home.

Subtitles go global

Enthused by the evidence on SLS in India, in the UK, there is currently a Turn On The Subtitles (TOTS) campaign directed at children’s programming.

And the potential of SLS is not limited to children’s programming. Several studies have found that the uniquely Indian challenge of transitioning half a billion TV-viewing weak readers — children, youth and adults — to functional reading ability can be achieved by marrying SLS with existing song-based programming on TV. A broadcast policy that required SLS on children’s programming and all Bollywood songs on TV would guarantee lifelong reading practice for a billion TV viewers.

The inimitable American comedian, Groucho Marx, once quipped, “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” To read a book you have to be able to read, first. For half a billion weak readers in India to be able to read, the reading revolution may just have to be televised. — Brij Kothari

A version of this article was originally published on the Harvard Economics Review.

(Picture credit: Pexels)