Imagine sitting in the classroom on a sultry afternoon, and not waiting for the bell to ring? Or, aiming at scoring the highest in class by writing about Professor Albus Dumbledore of Hogwarts?

Yes, this is going to be reality soon in many schools! The new ICSE syllabus for English literature is a dream-come-true for thousands of students in high school presently. While the Shakespearian plays remain unarguably timeless, J.K. Rowling’s bestselling fantasy series Harry Potter, the mystery marvels of Agatha Christie, graphic novels like Asterix, Amar Chitra Katha and The Adventures of Tintin have been finalised to be a part of the new syllabus of classes III to VIII.

How ecstatic the students must be to know they would read the stories of Satyajit Ray's Feluda, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in class! When we were in school, we used to wait for that day in the week that had a library period. Nestled in those shelves were books that transported us to different worlds. I can recall reading some of the best books in the school library. We would hide comics inside text books, and paralleled our world of imagination with the world of academic knowledge. Now students will read in classrooms what we read in libraries and at home. The famous American psychologist and author B.F. Skinner had rightly said – “We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”

We have read authors like Shelley, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist and Munshi Premchand in school. We have read the stories of Ruskin Bond and have loved the simplicity of his prose, transporting in our minds to the hills where the Deodars grew abundantly. But for us, the storybooks that we read as a part of our syllabus were limited.

Our education system was caught in a time-frame predisposition. This change is a positive one towards going more contemporary, and it seems like a fresh air to breathe.

Looking at this change in the academic syllabus from another angle, I think this will initiate the reading habit in many youngsters. When children are surrounded by books, they would be more inclined to pick them up and read them. Autobiographies of Anne Frank and Malala are books that hold an entire era in them – the gut-wrenching stories of two young girls in two parts of the world, one who succumbed and one who survived, both of them who changed humanity for the better with their courage and words, more than half a century apart.

Very true is the saying – “Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay where we are.”