Graduates who never read and do all that appertains to their degrees

A young journalist from Citizen Radio called me last week and requested an interview on what she described as the dissipating culture of reading in Kenyan schools.

My first instinct was to decline. Not because I did not have anything to say about the subject. No. Because the subject appeared almost too obvious to deserve another conversation.

I felt that it was rather pedantic to explain what many people witness every day. I wondered whether we had reached a point where discussing the decline of reading had become a regular ritual that changed nothing. “What is it that we have not said about poor reading culture?” I asked myself.

Almost at the same time, my friend Kennedy Buhere, an educationist of no mean repute, shared with me an article entitled College Professors Face an Emerging Challenge: We Know Students Are No Longer Reading Entire Books, published on 23 July 2026. As I read it, I realised that the phenomenon the journalist wanted me to discuss was neither uniquely Kenyan nor merely anecdotal.

University professors elsewhere are confronting the same unsettling reality. Students are increasingly unable or unwilling to read complete books. They prefer summaries, excerpts, videos, AI-generated notes and anything that compresses knowledge into digestible fragments.

The article confirmed what I have quietly observed in recent years. Put it crudely, the culture of sustained reading is fading before our eyes.

What worries me is not that students are reading less. No. The real concern is that we are gradually losing the capacity for sustained attention. For me, reading an entire book is more than an academic exercise. It teaches patience, concentration, imagination and the ability to follow a complex argument from beginning to end.

If students cannot sustain attention long enough to read a book, they will eventually struggle to sustain attention long enough to solve any societal problems.

Let me make this conversation even more uncomfortable. Allow me to turn my attention to teachers in schools and universities. We often lament that learners no longer read, yet we rarely ask a more disturbing question. Do teachers themselves read? Let us be honest.

A teacher who does not read cannot produce readers. Inspiration is rarely transmitted through instruction alone. It is transmitted through example. Period.

I have met teachers of literature who have not read a complete novel since they graduated from university. Some completed their studies more than twenty years ago.

They continue teaching the same texts, using the same notes they prepared many years earlier, without exposing themselves to new works of fiction or literary criticism. Those teaching in high schools rely on study notes.

If you ask me, such teachers may successfully prepare candidates for examinations, but they cannot cultivate a love for reading. Only crazy people imagine that they can ignite a fire with cold ashes. I am not one of them.

By saying this, I am not merely criticising literature teachers. It reflects a broader national disposition towards learning. I think we have unconsciously reduced reading to an examination strategy.

Learners read because examinations demand it. Once the examinations are over, the books are closed and often never reopened. In many ways, reading has become transactional. It is something one does to obtain marks, a certificate or a promotion.

The tragedy is that our education system was never intended to produce examination specialists alone. At its best, education seeks to awaken curiosity.

It should inspire an enduring desire to explore ideas long after formal schooling has ended. The certificate should mark the beginning of intellectual independence, not its conclusion. If our graduates stop reading immediately after graduation, then education has failed in one of its most fundamental responsibilities.

Have we forgotten many things in our insistence on skills and competences? I think so. We have forgotten that great scientific discoveries did not emerge from short summaries. Philosophical revolutions were born in libraries. Literary masterpieces were created by writers who first immersed themselves in the works of others.

My point is that even technological innovation depends upon people who are willing to study deeply and question established assumptions. Reading is not the opposite of innovation. It is one of its primary foundations.

I have heard some people blame the digital age for this decline in reading. True, technology has transformed how we consume information. I know that social media rewards brevity. Video platforms favour speed over reflection.

Artificial intelligence can produce summaries in seconds. These tools have undeniable value. I use many of them myself. The problem arises when convenience replaces intellectual effort. A summary may tell us what a book says, but it cannot reproduce the intellectual journey of reading the book itself. The discipline acquired through sustained reading cannot be downloaded. Never.

Perhaps it is time for us to redefine educational success. We celebrate impressive examination results and graduation ceremonies.

These achievements deserve recognition. Yet we should ask a deeper question. Are we producing graduates who continue learning without being compelled? Are we nurturing men and women who instinctively reach for a book whenever they encounter an unfamiliar idea? If the answer is no, then we have mistaken academic performance for education.

These questions compelled me to give the interview sought by the Citizen Radio journalist. The dissipating culture of reading is a fairly serious matter. It is about the future of our intellectual life as a nation. Our society has abandoned reading and is gradually surrendering its capacity to think critically and engage thoughtfully with the complexities of the modern world.

Perhaps we should worry less about whether our children pass examinations and more about whether they leave school with an insatiable appetite to read. Examinations eventually come to an end. Learning should not. The greatest achievement of any education system is not producing students who know all the answers. It is producing citizens who never stop asking questions and who instinctively know that the search for those answers often begins by opening a book.