Science is tentative. This means that science believing nothing is absolutely true.  It needs to be proven again and again. Hence, thinking critically through reading and writing is absolutely required to be trained to the young people to sustain the spirit of creating and innovating. Unfortunately, the report from PISA 2018 said that the students’ point in reading comprehension dropped from 397 to 371. They prefer playing online games to reading scientific books. They lose their curiosity on scientific thing as what they like is something that offers fun that does not need to think hard. This causes the high technology can’t be developed in this country despite a lot of intelligent students it has.  Therefore, it is quite important for the government to encourage teachers and students to read science books and write scientifically.

Here are the reasons; reading science books can open our mind about the world and arouse their interest about how the nature works and how the social phenomenon happens around them. Being interested and curious will bring us to the desire of knowing more and more about why and how it happens. This will lead us to have both an observation and experiment and finally we will need to write what we have found. Teachers are obliged to read and write for they play the main role in developing the youth’s habit and culture of being innovative. Imagine that teachers hate reading and writing. How can they encourage students to read and write if they never do it. How can they motivate the students to be creative and innovative if they themselves lack of knowledge and are not creative? Then, what will happen to this country whose young people are only expert at consuming things without being able to produce or create? Let’s see the result of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) saying that there was a decreasing score for each tested subject, Math, Science and Reading Comprehension in 2018 toward that in the previous years. This result is far below the international standard. So, what is happening? Surely, teachers’ competence in teaching is questioned. People say that it is due to the national education system. However, the system is only a tool. Whatever system is won’t raise the students’ literacy if teachers are illiterate.The last but not least is that training the students to read scientific books and write scientifically will grow the habit to think critically and logically. This becomes important as they will always try to analyze what is happening clearly and be able to find the solution of problems more appropriately. Consequently, curiosity that is the main factor of an innovation will grow so well that students are always stimulated to read a lot to get much knowledge before having an experiment.

In conclusion, having broad knowledge and understanding about the world through reading science books will not only develop the students’ curiosity to know more about the relation between the nature and its ecosystem but also make use of it wisely.  As a result, they will love the nature and protect it. Surely, this will motivate them to innovate things that are friendly to the nature. The great impact of this kind of innovation will bring this nation to the self-fulfilled country, and even supply other countries as we are rich with the natural resources. Moreover, the good writing skill will make us capable of communicating or cooperating with other scientists on our innovation, invention or discovery. Gradually, we will be able to develop our country to the advanced one. (Written by Hedwig)