Reading is not a highly practiced exercise here. I have memories of travelling on the subway and buses and seeing fellow passengers reading the latest bestseller or a dog-eared favorite, taking advantage of the dead time of the commute. Here, when people are waiting, they're either playing with their phone, gossipping with their acquaintances, or staring into space. My father has a monthly appointment with his doctor because of a medication he takes that has to be controlled. Every time we show up in the waiting room, I'm the only one with a book. It's almost as if people were allergic to them.
Some of the kids I help with English do not read for pleasure. The only book they'll crack open is the book they have to read for school. I remember when I was a teenager the only books I didn't want to read were the ones for school. If I'd had my way I would only have read books for pleasure. Asking some of my English students, I found that all those who get good grades love to read. Those who get medium grades mostly like to read except for two. And those who get low grades mostly don't care about reading, except for one who does like to read but is too lazy to study.
Children aren't challenged in school with good books, either. In the local primary school children have to take a library book home every Friday to read over the weekend. Most don't read it or ask to have it read. In fifth and sixth grades they have to buy one or two reading books they discuss in class. The books are simple. In seventh grade my daughter had to read a book for Castilian. When I bought it for her I asked to make sure it was that book. I was assured that that was the title my daughter had been asked to read. While it was a good book, it was really meant for nine-year-olds, not twelve-year-old kids in seventh grade. I remember reading The Tempest for school when I was twelve. And whereas American teenagers have to read Shakespeare for school, Spanish kids have never read anything by Cervantes, not El Quijote, not Novelas Ejemplares, not anything else by any other Spanish Golden Age writer. Picking up some of the books older teenagers have on their reading list, I have sometimes wondered if there is an agreement between the author, the publishing house, and the Ministry of Education. Because few, if any, of those books are good, solid books that will one day be considered classics.
Children who don't read for pleasure grow up into adults who read only contracts, and those without much understanding. One of the greatest banking scandals in these latter years in Spain concerns shares called preferentes where the money invested was tied up for so many years that most who bought them would recuperate their money and any benefits a hundred years after they would have died. That detail was in the very fine print of the contract, but most who were offered the deal were older and simpler folk who were not in the habit of reading legalese or anything else and believed what was explained to them.
The problem is very few people are in the habit of reading. Last year the Ministry of Culture and Education announced gleefully that more than half the population was in the habit of reading, and that the tendency was that more people were reading than ever before. The fact that they have to compile statistics and shout them from the roof tops is evidence enough of the enormity of the problem. However, more than half of the population included people who read, at most, one book in a year. Only around thirty percent read eight books a year or more. Another thirty to forty percent read absolutely nothing. I see plenty of these people all around me. And not all of them are elderly. Many people my age never read a book. Younger people who left school at the earliest possible age also never read books. In some houses the books are simply adornments that look nice on a couple of the shelves that surround the television set. They're treated the same as the glass and porcelain figurines.
I've noticed in my trips to Madrid that in the big cities you are most likely to see people reading books during empty times, such as waiting for the subway. In one commuter rail station my daughter and I actually saw a vending machine with books. While the habit of book vending machines may be established in some of the big cities, it was the first one we had ever seen and raised our hopes in the achievement of complete literacy. But we didn't move around the lowest working class neighborhoods, where I'm sure the habits are more like in the country. And people see books as alien to them. In other words, that books are for the rich and those who have important jobs. It's true that books are expensive if you compare their price to the typical salary. A new hardback can cost as much as twenty-five euros. A paperback can reach fifteen. Salaries these days have fallen to anywhere from six hundred euros to twelve hundred euros a month for unskilled and partly skilled workers. People who have problems paying the light bill and the mortgage are not about to buy books. And libraries have also suffered from the cutbacks, shortening hours and buying less books for the shelves. It seems that soon regular reading will truly be for the rich.
Reading in Spain has always been reserved for the upper classes. Mostly to be able to control the lower classes. If the poor couldn't read, they couldn't be polluted by radical ideas coming from the rest of Europe that would contaminate placid Catholic Spain. Obligatory schooling was introduced by Franco in the 1940's only to produce skilled workers, not intellectually curious citizens. We had a parish priest here who died recently I believe at the age of ninety. He firmly believed that reading books would turn a person's head and that it was the worst thing a parent could encourage. The only books he recommended reading was the Bible and the works of the saints. My mother-in-law still contends that the son of a neighbor years ago went insane because of all the books he read, and was constantly warning against our daughter reading too much in the fear that would also happen to her. But reading has only led her to see the many injustices there are and to join a couple associations at university to help combat them. Those in the upper echelons don't appreciate that power of reading.
If the children who now like to read can be encouraged through their adolescence to keep reading and become adults with critical thinking abilities, some day in the future the rest of society will appreciate the value of a book.
Some of the kids I help with English do not read for pleasure. The only book they'll crack open is the book they have to read for school. I remember when I was a teenager the only books I didn't want to read were the ones for school. If I'd had my way I would only have read books for pleasure. Asking some of my English students, I found that all those who get good grades love to read. Those who get medium grades mostly like to read except for two. And those who get low grades mostly don't care about reading, except for one who does like to read but is too lazy to study.
Children aren't challenged in school with good books, either. In the local primary school children have to take a library book home every Friday to read over the weekend. Most don't read it or ask to have it read. In fifth and sixth grades they have to buy one or two reading books they discuss in class. The books are simple. In seventh grade my daughter had to read a book for Castilian. When I bought it for her I asked to make sure it was that book. I was assured that that was the title my daughter had been asked to read. While it was a good book, it was really meant for nine-year-olds, not twelve-year-old kids in seventh grade. I remember reading The Tempest for school when I was twelve. And whereas American teenagers have to read Shakespeare for school, Spanish kids have never read anything by Cervantes, not El Quijote, not Novelas Ejemplares, not anything else by any other Spanish Golden Age writer. Picking up some of the books older teenagers have on their reading list, I have sometimes wondered if there is an agreement between the author, the publishing house, and the Ministry of Education. Because few, if any, of those books are good, solid books that will one day be considered classics.
Children who don't read for pleasure grow up into adults who read only contracts, and those without much understanding. One of the greatest banking scandals in these latter years in Spain concerns shares called preferentes where the money invested was tied up for so many years that most who bought them would recuperate their money and any benefits a hundred years after they would have died. That detail was in the very fine print of the contract, but most who were offered the deal were older and simpler folk who were not in the habit of reading legalese or anything else and believed what was explained to them.
The problem is very few people are in the habit of reading. Last year the Ministry of Culture and Education announced gleefully that more than half the population was in the habit of reading, and that the tendency was that more people were reading than ever before. The fact that they have to compile statistics and shout them from the roof tops is evidence enough of the enormity of the problem. However, more than half of the population included people who read, at most, one book in a year. Only around thirty percent read eight books a year or more. Another thirty to forty percent read absolutely nothing. I see plenty of these people all around me. And not all of them are elderly. Many people my age never read a book. Younger people who left school at the earliest possible age also never read books. In some houses the books are simply adornments that look nice on a couple of the shelves that surround the television set. They're treated the same as the glass and porcelain figurines.
I've noticed in my trips to Madrid that in the big cities you are most likely to see people reading books during empty times, such as waiting for the subway. In one commuter rail station my daughter and I actually saw a vending machine with books. While the habit of book vending machines may be established in some of the big cities, it was the first one we had ever seen and raised our hopes in the achievement of complete literacy. But we didn't move around the lowest working class neighborhoods, where I'm sure the habits are more like in the country. And people see books as alien to them. In other words, that books are for the rich and those who have important jobs. It's true that books are expensive if you compare their price to the typical salary. A new hardback can cost as much as twenty-five euros. A paperback can reach fifteen. Salaries these days have fallen to anywhere from six hundred euros to twelve hundred euros a month for unskilled and partly skilled workers. People who have problems paying the light bill and the mortgage are not about to buy books. And libraries have also suffered from the cutbacks, shortening hours and buying less books for the shelves. It seems that soon regular reading will truly be for the rich.
Reading in Spain has always been reserved for the upper classes. Mostly to be able to control the lower classes. If the poor couldn't read, they couldn't be polluted by radical ideas coming from the rest of Europe that would contaminate placid Catholic Spain. Obligatory schooling was introduced by Franco in the 1940's only to produce skilled workers, not intellectually curious citizens. We had a parish priest here who died recently I believe at the age of ninety. He firmly believed that reading books would turn a person's head and that it was the worst thing a parent could encourage. The only books he recommended reading was the Bible and the works of the saints. My mother-in-law still contends that the son of a neighbor years ago went insane because of all the books he read, and was constantly warning against our daughter reading too much in the fear that would also happen to her. But reading has only led her to see the many injustices there are and to join a couple associations at university to help combat them. Those in the upper echelons don't appreciate that power of reading.
If the children who now like to read can be encouraged through their adolescence to keep reading and become adults with critical thinking abilities, some day in the future the rest of society will appreciate the value of a book.
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