poor reading awareness

Indonesian people, especially Indonesian students have a poor awareness to read. Tony Martonis said in his book Nyala Satu Tumbuh Seribu that; Indonesian students prefer to look for information through television or radio rather than books or another reading media. Indonesian Statistic Center data showed in 2006 that about 23,5% of Indonesian use reading as new information sources. In addition, Indonesian habitually access information through television about 85,9% peoples and 40,3% peoples access through radio. Those big facts about reading awareness are the basic problem of education in Indonesia.

Although everybody knows that reading can improve knowledge, reading awareness in Indonesia is still poor. It can be because of the existence of multimedia in Indonesia. Multimedia are not only a television and a radio but also some gadgets such as hand phone, computer, notebook, I-pad etc. before 20 years ago, students’ activities were reading a book or another physical activities. The indication of the effect of multimedia was found since in the beginning of 90’s. It is starting from the existence of television which shows a variety of programs. Then, hand phone with games and its features and applications comes. After that, computers in a various kinds such as net book, laptop (notebook), tablet and sometimes it combines with mobile phone. The interesting thing of multimedia results in the intensity of reading activity is falling off because the student enjoys with his or her new activity. Mr. Ghani Johan said “when he was a student of Yogyakarta State University, the student’s always hold book in his or her pocket but now the student hold hand phone in his or her pocket and read them in the leisure time. It reduces the motivation to read and the curiosity to get more knowledge by studying”. Related to Mr. Ghani Johan’s was said, generally it impacts to the achievement of student in University. We can’t against the existence of technology because it is an information era. Those are several effects of multimedia to reading awareness though there are a lot of benefits of them. Multimedia not merely brings a negative effect to the students but the students usually have a misconception of using multimedia. Globalization effect can not be avoided. Indonesian people, especially Indonesian students often use multimedia too much specially internet. They use it for networking activities. Reading face book or twitter status is more interesting than reading scientific article. That’s why the reading motivation of Indonesian people is low. Instead, the parameter of country’s development can be seen by assess the reading motivation of the citizens.