Reading Poland. Don't read the first better book

With Maria Deskur, co-founder and president of the Universal Reading Foundation, we talk about what reading gives us and our children, about the possible threat of paper books by technology, and besides answer the crucial question – do Poles read books?

(Interview is simply a edited and completed version of the podcast Are you aware? p. Books: Read or smoke?).

Rafał Górski: Mrs. Mario, I will start with a fundamental question: should we read books or burn them?

Maria Deskur: Of course, read, though I must admit that the quotes you found [the talker refers to the statements quoted by Rafał Górski at the beginning] podcast – ed.], they give a small thought.

Books make us very much, not only build our humanistic knowledge, but besides train our brain in many directions.

It is repeated that reading builds imagination – I effort to escape this phrase. It is true, but I think that reading suffers by specified phrases and rooted conviction that we are actually dealing with books to become humanists, people of culture or, perhaps, patriots – Polish, European, Kashubian, etc. Reading, in fact, as I said, is an exercise that builds the competence of our brain and thinking, especially erstwhile we are inactive small.

There are interesting studies that show that intense reading is simply a very good predictor of large kid grades in various physical-technical-mathematic subjects. The act of reading itself besides involves a good paradox. This is the kind of activity that we usually do in silence, and erstwhile we are older and do not request the aid of parents, we usually do it alone – but it is lonely reading that teaches us human contacts. In fact, taking a book to hand, we open ourselves to what individual else has to say to us, we get to know the emotions of this person, their experience, their attitude to reality.

Do you mention to a paper book or to an electronic form?

That's a very good question. An crucial component in these considerations is the age of the reader.

Little children, in order to have a chance to develop, should definitely read or experience reading paper books together with pictures.

The older we are, the little crucial the form of reading is.

What do you think of specified a situation: parents give their kid a smartphone in which there is any form of book and the kid reads it.

It depends on the age of this child. At this point, there's quite a few investigation that shows that small kids shouldn't get smartphones. The Swedish Ministry of Education has even written down any steps: until the second year of life at all do not give the kid a phone, then it can be allowed to usage it for 15 minutes during the day and so on.

Smartphone does not contribute to baby development. We can get the other impression due to the fact that the kid enjoys utilizing the telephone – the screen flashes, which creates very superficial reactions. But it's just perception, not brain work to realize what's being served. improvement is about work. I like comparing it to physical movement – if we sit on the couch for a period and don't decision from it, our muscles will fundamentally disappear, it will be very hard to lift up. You gotta imagine that our brain works the same way. We request to get him moving if we don't want to origin situations where we're just looking for the reception.

We are born with very neuroplastic brains, in newborns and young children they are highly absorbent, about 85% of our brain improvement occurs during these first 3 years of life.

The environment in which we live can stimulate us more or less, so it is crucial that we read, play with him, talk to him. Then the book – which in the first phase is not expected to be absolutely any large literature – becomes the perfect tool for stimulating the child's brain to make properly.

What caused you to address the subject of universal reading?

I'm a publisher. I began to observe the investigation of the National Library and saw that reading in Poland is clearly lower than in many another European countries.

In our 43% adult population declares that it has read about 1 book a year. Meanwhile, in England, France, the Czech Republic or Scandinavia, it is about 70%, sometimes even 80% of the population.

This difference is large adequate that it intrigued me and I began to read how these another countries work. I realized that there were actually different things to do. Not only ministries, but frequently functioning NGOs, do. And it turns out a small bit that you gotta effort to do what is being done in the planet for 30 years and what has very documented results, evaluations and evidence that actually works.

In 2018, together with my colleagues, I managed to get a full of twenty-one publishers and distributors to make the Universal Reading Foundation together. Our aim, of course, is to increase the level of reading in Poland. We carry out various campaigns for the improvement of children, support their parents and show the link between reading and the wellness of citizens and the improvement of democracy, its economy and its innovation.

I came across any time ago in social media, in antisocial media, on a carbon of a calendar card from a fewer decades ago. This card included 10 tips on how to read. I'll call 3 of them. One, don't read the first better book, like you don't accept all stray into your home. Collect opinions about the book, consult yourself, review it, and read it only erstwhile you have a real interest in it. Second point: read only valuable books, due to the fact that human life is besides short to waste on average things. The eighth rule: read small books, but thoroughly, due to the fact that only lazy people read a lot. What do you think? Do you have any rules of your own about readingbooks?

That's what makes you think. I agree with them. It's worth reading something we're curious in. There are very moving studies showing that reading for pleasance is simply a powerful mechanics that fosters the improvement of children. Reading for pleasance is simply a stronger predictor of good educational results than our socio-economic background. I think that as adults we should definitely read what we want (maybe we like it or possibly we are interested, or possibly we want to know the book that others are criticizing? Have your own opinion?)

As for reading mediocre books – it is hard to force individual to do so. Sometimes it happens that we're a small more tired and we take the reading book that we got from individual once. I do not think that individual will get hurt from reading something that is not large literature – it is clear that we have small time, but I am not an extremist, I can imagine a situation in which individual has read popular literature, laughed or moved. I don't feel like we gotta always check ourselves out and wonder if the book we read is advanced enough. Of course, it is worth looking for things that actually interest us. Finally, of course, it is worth paying attention to quality. Only in any kind of freedom.

You said not to read much, but deep. I like the offer.

I think that biting into a book is an incredibly cool experience. We have the beloved books we're going back to, not to find out what happened. We read them due to the fact that we always experience them in any way, each time a small different. We interact with the author, with emotions, with any part of this planet presented. We always find something that moves us deeply. We should not care that we gotta read a lot, we can surely dig into books we already know.

We operate without censorship. We don't advertise, we don't charge for texts. We request your support. Throw yourself in the media.

You mentioned statistics. Do Poles read books?

They read a little, but I think there's area for us to read more, go to public libraries. They are free, there you can rent quite a few books, without paying for it, I besides warmly recommend. In Poland, the network of libraries is powerful. There are people, about ten, in kidnappers up to a twelve percent, who regularly read books – also, in fact, it is simply a minority. You can shrug with your arms and ask what of it, but as a man digs into various studies – we do it as an organization – it will see what reading gives us and what we deprive ourselves of without it. If we do not read, it is much more hard for us to function in a community on many levels, especially in a young generation for which reading is simply a democratic tool for building equal opportunities for each child. I admit it makes me feel better. I see deep meaning and reasons why it is worth reading. Of course, everyone decides for themselves and we will not force anyone to do anything.

Today I was in 1 of the banks where I was invited to the webinar to tell my employees what it gives them as bankers, managers, which gives their families.

It was an amazing experience, quite a few people and questions. I had this feeling that in AI times, we had to take care of our own intelligence to someway manage the artificial one. There is besides much talk about intellectual instability – there are amazing studies showing how reading calms us. There are quite a few reasons for reading, and I would not go along with it either.

I heard your voice in the panel at the conference, Attention! Smartphone’ in Katowice, dedicated to reading. I was touched by what you said about equalizing the odds and how you started your reading adventure and saw the effects, especially in poorer families. I am pleased that your foundation has been established and you are promoting a culture of reading due to the fact that it is crucial to me, too. I remember erstwhile I utilized to go to the school library and rent books there. It's very good to remember. present I have specified a defect that the paper book – if it is good – I want to have it at home, on the shelf, so that I can return to it over the years. A friend of mine wrote a book and asked me if I could compose a short cover communicative about it. And I said, "I don't read pdf at all, I can't read digitally." Paper, book on the shelf – it is an amazing value. I feel like now the kids are getting farther distant from it.

Today, there is rather widespread talk about the global crisis of reading in relation to technologies. Many parents hand out smartphones to their children without realizing that this is bad for them. Of course, this is not about any technophobia – we don't give the baby a knife either. Not due to the fact that we have something against knives, just due to the fact that we know it can cut itself with this knife. I think the comparison is definitely right.

The smartphone in the baby's hand actually hurts him, due to the fact that it does not origin development, but draws into dependence on the flashing screen.

There are parents who just don't know it. There's quite a few investigation around it, doctors' awareness is growing, the pediatric community is going to talk about it more and more, so I think step by step parents will be equipped with this knowledge.

The planet makes applications for babies, but we can handle it. I'm, as you can hear, a large optimist, but I besides see doctors' reactions to what we do. I've talked to quite a few doctors who forbid the usage of their smartphones at their clinic: in the waiting area and in the office. They talk about it a lot, so in the context of tiny children, it's all about supporting them in their development, accompanying them to a minute erstwhile their brain will make and be ready to usage your smartphone. We all have phones, and no 1 demands to throw them in the trash. The point is to impose digital hygiene.

What institutions could gain political or economical power as a consequence of the widespread failure of reading among people? Will this percent decrease in the age of ubiquitous technology? You're an optimist, I'm a realist, and unfortunately, I get the impression that reading books, especially paper books, is getting little and little among younger yearbooks.

We'll see. Indeed, neuroscientists pay attention to this. We work with a prof. of most likely sixty years old, from the University of California, who calls himself a readership warrior – he uses the word “reading warrior” – and he says that erstwhile she became a scientist a fewer decades ago, she had no sense at all that her work had anything to do with democracy. Today, on the another hand, he believes that if we do not fight for, as she calls it, deep reading, democracy will actually be in a much worse state.

Last autumn, a group of European neuroscientists published a manifesto from Ljubljana, in which they asked the authorities to pay more backing for reading promotion in the context of building brain resilience to fake news, manipulations and specified various pleasures served to us by the community, which we see even more in the era of artificial intelligence, which is able to produce a mass of dangerous information in a second. This is surely a serious subject.

I asked this question a small provocatively, due to the fact that whether Orwell or Huxley or Postman in Technopol wrote that a situation in which people do not read books is attractive and beneficial to power, which, no substance what it may be, citizens treat as objects alternatively than entities of life in society.

I would not be easy inclined to acknowledge, in my affirmative approach, that Polish politicians of any of the options truly want to incapacitate us. I don't see the intention. I think it is crucial to realise that reading is an essential origin in the improvement and strength of democracy. This is something that we, as an organization, are trying to work on, to realize that it is not only the interest of people of culture, people associated with education, economy, with the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, with the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy, but our common one. Health, economical or even technological results will be much better if we make more children we release from our schools able to read and like.

We are trying to concentrate on expanding the group of curious people, organisations, institutions, not just within culture and education, and showing that this is simply a common issue. I besides feel that in the first phase it is not about telling ourselves that we request immense money for this.

Consider the example of Zabrz. It is most likely the first city in Poland, which, in strong cooperation with us, entered reading in the document,Zabrze City improvement strategy 2030‘’ as a key tool for economical development.

At this minute in Zabrze are held training employees of the city office with the importance of reading for development, with the training of knowing skills and text analysis. There was a conference – in which we participated as an organization – for the medical and authoritative communities there about what reading can give communities. And these actions did not increase public spending but changed their allocation.

A fewer days ago, anti-social media ran around this document, European Union Regulationwhich concerns a fresh regulation on the monitoring of afforestation and deforestation. This process involves various products, including the book as part of the supply chain related to the rotation of the tree. any netizens felt that this might be part of a policy where climate care is linked to limiting the production of paper books that affect forests. Have you had a chance to get acquainted with this? What is your opinion on the possible threat to paper books in the context of the increasing popularity of digital media?

The paper book is surely not in danger. As for the regulation itself, it imposes less obligations on tiny publishers than on large ones. If a tiny publisher works with a printer or a paper company that has audits, it's adequate to pass. due diligence [the investigation process, which aims to carefully and thoroughly check the organisation before deciding on the investment or conclusion of the contract, etc.] on the parts of the product which it has acquired from that printer. There are greater expectations for larger publishers. They themselves must prove that they have their production under control.

As I mentioned, I am from the publishing world, so for a good fewer years I worked in very large publishing houses, where we went through quite a few audits due to the fact that we worked with various large companies, American corporations from which we bought licenses. It was about 10 years ago, we had to have papers and printers audited. It seems to me that in the professional planet it is to survive, so I would not fear for the future existence of a paper book. delight besides note that in Poland it accounts for 90% and possibly even more of the book market. In England or the United States, this number is smaller and at any phase even 30% of the turnover was ebooks. Paper dominates most planet markets.

What crucial question has no 1 asked you about today?

The question that always appears on the margin is what we should set a mark for our activities as a foundation.

With many another organizations we have established coalition, Reading Poland’’. Its aim is to increase reading in Poland to 70%, i.e. as in another countries I mentioned.

Such a goal motivates us, triggers us, is simply a commitment, possibly even a burden, but it besides expresses ambition, a dream, gives us wings. I have this memory from the time we first started talking about it. About 30 people gathered and we all felt the strength of specified a crazy goal. We realized that we weren't just sitting around to talk, to do something.

Mrs. Mario, thank you so much for talking to me.

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