The recently-concluded Read or Die Convention (RodCon) does not seem to have made it into the newspapers yet, but bloggers began writing about it and sharing their photos as early as its first day. Check out how many and how happy they were via Technorati and Google Blog Search.
If you would like to read about what other bloggers have written in the past few days that are not necessarily related to the convention, you should read the following:
If you would like to read about what other bloggers have written in the past few days that are not necessarily related to the convention, you should read the following:
Charles Tan makes no reference to RodCon in "Is Reading Truly Essential?" but he provides an answer that suggests where his sympathies lie:
It is commonly believed that humans have basic needs—food, water, shelter. However, I beg to differ if that is merely enough. They are all we require to survive perhaps but we need more to be human: we need companionship, we need work, we need something to pass the time... For me, reading a book is one such need: it does not have the same urgency as food, drink, and shelter, and by no means does every human being depend on the ability to read books to survive. But for certain people, reading a book is surely a necessity they can’t live without or else they will end up living a life that is less than human.John Silva criticizes Bench's Wear Your Conscience campaign in "There's a Typo on the Bench Billboard":
If the use of billboards to hawk a cause isn’t egregious enough, the more nauseating aspect of the campaign is the insensitivity of the “Conscience” message to the reality at hand. Sa Aklat Sisikat, like other education reform organizations, valiantly works to make more children read through teacher training and the distribution of books at the Grade Four Level... Aklat Sisikat’s work is so serious and formidable that the billboard images of slouched and pampered individuals reeking of privilege dreamily exhorting working people on buses and the MRT plying EDSA to go get a conscience is surreal, obscene, arriviste, and deepens the already tenuous class divide even further.Finally, Ruby Ann Kagaoan-Calo explains in "Reading and a Sense of Nation" just why reading is important and that kids can be taught how to read better:
...some parents in the school where my other child is attending had noticed how my child would just quietly sit down, read a book, and she would finish it quickly and get another one...Now, if only all these bloggers would join the Get Caught Reading campaign =)
And a number of parents had noticed it, and they were saying, "Sana gan’un yung anak namin." (How we wish our child is like your child.)
And I told them, "She’s doing some techniques."
"Techniques?! Meron bang techniques sa reading?" (Are there techniques in reading?)
"Yes, there are."
