We don't realize how important it is to read. Since, the information that you receive from it enables you to gain knowledge and meanings of things around us. In a way, we do start reading from the day we are born. I don't mean that we actually read a book, but rather that we start reading the behavior and characteristics of our parents and surroundings. As we get little older, we start reading books to learn our ABCs but we never understand that reading is a crucial part of our life. The school programs don't emphasize that much on reading, so we tend to read only when it's necessary for school. I, personally, didn't think reading was that important until the past few years. .
I never took reading that serious, since I was able to grasp meanings of things from reading books, newspapers, magazines, conversations, or just watching TV when it was necessary. When I was young, I was in this program from the local library that awarded you on how many books you can read over the summer. The way they examine the number of books you read was by having to write a book report on each book. At the end of the summer, they would count who read the most books and you would receive an award for it. I was in that program for only one summer, since I never understood what was the reason behind it. What I mean is that from this program I never understood what they were trying to really pursue. If the program had a better way to show the importance of reading maybe things would have been different from me. In high school, I would read many books but only to meet the class requirements. When I look back at high school I"m amazed on how they also don't emphasize on how important reading is. The teachers in high school emphasize on reading only so we meet the classroom criteria and that we are able to move on to college. .
In college, you have to read many books and write term papers which are nothing compared to what you had done in high school.