{"id":145927,"date":"2015-08-24T15:05:20","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T15:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=145927"},"modified":"2015-08-24T15:05:20","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T15:05:20","slug":"create-congenial-environment-for-public-school-pupils-anis-haffar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=145927","title":{"rendered":"Create congenial environment for public school pupils &#8211; Anis Haffar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Following recent discussions on how to improve reading and writing in public schools, educationist and founder of the GATE Foundation, Anis Haffar has advocated the provision of a congenial environment to unearth and sharpen the literary skills of such students.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cEvery kid needs to have a place of solitude where they can sit and read so I always suggest that there is a desk for every school going child and a chair and maybe shelves where they can begin to keep their books,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;GrDQb8tgHcgDDXDifyduMcfgTXl15lZc&#8221;]It emerged after the selection of top 20 contestants in this year\u2019s Citi FM Write Away Contest that few participants came from the public schools.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The situation, some believe is as a result of the absence of effective systems to train and develop the literary skills of students in public schools.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0Mr. Anis Haffar said\u00a0parents and teachers should find innovative ways to encourage children to read.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe teachers themselves need to be seen reading\u2026.because we want to let the children know that reading is something that is so important that the earlier we start the better. We don\u2019t want the people to grow up and then tell them to read because they\u2019ve developed the wrong habit,\u201d Mr. Anis Haffer stated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cI keep saying this many times when I go to the universities, it\u2019s almost impossible to see one or two people sitting and reading, these are the things that we have to begin to do,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mr. Haffar also\u00a0criticized the culture of authorities undermining the youth<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWe really have to begin to boost the morale and inspire the young people in this country because they are capable, but what I have noticed though is that we tend typically in Africa do take the young people for granted. We don\u2019t see the need to encourage them as much; we don\u2019t think they are capable of doing greater things and so on. All those things should now begin to be identified,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ten out of a total of twenty shortlisted students are expected to be announced and finally screened to three.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Write-Away contest aims at unearthing the writing potential of young people by giving them the opportunity to express themselves through creative writing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This year\u2019s winner will receive 10000 Ghana cedis, while the first and second runners up will each receive cash prize of 5000 and 2000 Ghana cedis.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8211;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By: Pius Amihere Eduku\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following recent discussions on how to improve reading and writing in public schools, educationist and founder of the GATE Foundation, Anis Haffar has advocated the provision of a congenial environment to unearth and sharpen the literary skills of such students. \u201cEvery kid needs to have a place of solitude where they can sit and read [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":145931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,16],"class_list":["post-145927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/145931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}