The Hindu : Kerala / Thrissur News : Call to inculcate reading habit in children

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 06, 2004

Kerala

Kerala - Thrissur

Call to inculcate reading habit in children

By Our Staff Reporter

THRISSUR, OCT. 5. The noted social critic, Sukumar Azhikode,

has called upon teachers and parents to expose children to boundless reading avenues through libraries.

He was speaking at the inauguration of a ten-day national book festival organised here by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi.

Emphasising the need for acquiring knowledge from books that are in effect a parallel universe, Dr. Azhikode said that educational institutions and parents often forced children to confine to reading textbooks.

Delivering the keynote address, the Left ideologue, P. Govinda Pillai, said that a culture of living in consonance with nature should replace the present tendency of wanton environment destruction in the name of development. He said that of late it had become a regular practice to attack environment movements being led by people like M.K. Prasad even though it was becoming increasingly clear that the issues they were raising were of great significance in the background of the indiscriminate profit-driven industrialisation programmes being launched in the present era of globalisation.

The Speaker, Therambil Ramakrishnan, in his presidential address said that reading was essential for acquiring value system in life.

Refutes argument

Inaugurating an exhibition of drawings of artist Madanan on Thrissur, the noted historian, MGS Narayanan, refuted the argument that the architecture of some of the old mosques and churches in the State were similar to temples because they had been built after demolishing the temples.

He said that architects who had built the temples had been deployed to build mosques and churches by the rulers and this was the reason why the mosques and churches had similar architecture as that of temples.

He said the architecture of temples in the State had been developed in the present form in the medieval period. Temples, mosques and churches, including the Vadakkunnathan Temple in Thrissur, Cherman Masjid in Kodungallur and Arnos Church in Velur, must have been built in the present form around that period and not earlier, he said.

Exhibition

The CPI(M) leader, A. Vijayaraghavan, MP, who inaugurated an exhibition of percussion instruments of the State said that percussion instruments had a class content and were extensively used in the cultural expressions of the struggle against the oppressive class.

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