Malta at bottom of EU readership table

Mr Debono, who says you have to be inside to enjoy a book? I have a full time job and two kids and still wouldn't be caught for five minutes staring at the air. I literally take a book with me anywhere.

Reading is entertaing, relaxing and educational.

It could be a problem. But I guess the rate for newspaper and magazine readership is quite higher.

Moreover, Malta enjoys excellent weather (ask the Scandinavians!!), and I for one would rather go out and enjoy what I can than stay inside reading a book.

Isn't ironic that two European agencies – ECRI and Eurobarometer have carried out negative reports regarding Malta's interests in reading and the way we treat illegal immigrants?

Perhaps these European agencies hope that the Maltese can't read neither and that they can save face.

Sad results. Couple of possible reasons/excuses:

a) Southern Europeans have more of an outdoor lifestyle than people living up North.

b) Few people use public transport (too inefficient and bumpy), and the distances are not long enough to read a book.

As we know, many strategies aimed at changing cultures, educational or social values target children.

Let's take the environmental problem of throwing rubbish out. We had the Xummiemu campaign, targeted at the youngest. That was a success - kids telling their parents not to throw rubbish out. Fine.

We had the campaign targeted again at kiddies telling them that kids shouldn't take alcohol. The effects of this campaign shall hopefully bear their fruits in the future more than in the present.

Is it possible to change the culture of the parents? Maybe it is, but it's too difficult. Let's put our cards on the table - for certain parents, what's important is not that their kids read, but that their kids keep out of mischief, while they do what they please ... now ... if keeping out of mischief means reading, that's perfect. If keeping out of mischief means watching TV, or spending hours in front of a computer, maybe in their room .... then hard luck, but it's a good way to keep the kids out of causing problems! A good baby-sitter - for free!

The school is the ideal environment where kids are nurtured to experience the beauty of reading, and gathering knowledge. Teach the kids to enjoy reading, and the country will have future parents who will teach their kids the same.

Parents must lead by example. Children have a greater chance of taking up reading willingly if they see their parents indulging in the same hobby. The more they read, the better they get at reading, the more they will therefore enjoy reading, leading them to read more - it's a vicious circle.

If children nowadays spend more time watching TV in their rooms, it's because we parents put the TV there in the first place. If they spend more time playing video or computer games, it's because we parents don't control their time.

Schools do prescribe an amount of daily reading and this may be viewed as homework. However, the books the children read need not be textbooks but age appropriate books either bought by the parents or acquired from a library.

Let's not try to shift the blame on any political party's education strategies but take up our parental responsibilities.

Unfortunately, that's the attitude towards books in this country: Books = School = Boooring.

Very few Maltese people take a book with them to the beach - they'd rather lie down motionless in the sun for hours than read.

This week I was in a long queue to meet my doctor and everyone was complaining about how long it was taking him to see each patient. If they'd have done like me and brought a book along...

One is not surprised by these findings. We were aware of this situation and to be precise, 10 years ago, the percentage was 48%. One wonders why certain people have to mention whether one reads English or Maltese books, because the report speaks about reading books, without specifics!
Have you not understood the English in the report?

It is important to give an example to children by reading ourselves and having books around the house. However, before that, it is important to read to our kids. How many of us parents are ready to sacrifice at least half an hour every evening? I spent about 8 years reading to my children every evening until they were old enough to read to themselves. Now, they won't sleep before spending at least 30 to 60 minutes reading their latest book.

This is a really worrying statistic and could be evidence to support the common criticism of the Maltese being a parochial and small-minded society. There are regular arguments in the press about favouring Maltese over English or Italian as the most commonly spoken / written language. My worry about Maltese as a language is the lack of quality reading material available to exclusively Maltese speakers. The great works of literature, philosophy and science are unavailable to exclusively Maltese speakers. This is a great tragedy. The Maltese language is held up as a symbol of national identity and something to be proud of. That is all well and good, but this statistic reveals the dangers of rejecting English or Italian (or Spanish or German or French, etc) in preference to Maltese. Another shocking statistic which I read recently, and which might help underline this danger, is that more books were translated into Spanish last year than have been translated into Farsi (Persian) since the Middle-Ages. Iran as a nation seems to have problems with its relationship with the “enlightened” world as a result. Wide-spread ignorance, as distinct from stupidity, in the areas of philosophy and science, serves the purposes of political control freaks via their propaganda media. Iran and Malta may have more in common than many might think. Access to knowledge through the written or spoken word is crucial in changing this state of affairs. The other big story today, about the CoE branding the Maltese as racist, is another sympton of general ignorance within a society. Having lived many years in the UK, as well as Malta, I have to concede that the CoE observations seem sadly accurate to me. I await the comments that will doubtless appear on the CoE thread along the lines of "We are not racist, we just don't want black people here" etc, etc.

Ms Caruana Galizia, not everybody for whom English is a second language "struggles" to read English. In my family we speak Maltese first and foremost, however our English is very good and we read contemporary English fiction voraciously. My five-year old speaks both languages very well for her age. Believe it or not, it is possible to know both, communicate with both and appreciate literature in both languages.

Malta should not have joined the EU. Then no one would have found out.

What embarassing figures! I agree with M. Brincat we need to interest kids in books at a young age. First and foremost is example - seeing parents read and lots of books round the house are key. But I become very concerned when reading becomes part of homework and the books to be read are text books. Reading should be a fun thing they do in their leisure time, so we really need to find some other ways of making books are part of kids' lives.

Many people I meet can easily tell you the evenings' Tv schedule, what will be discussed on Xarabank, what happened on Bondi +, who was the guest on realta, what was the latest scandal revealed on super one etc etc but very few would be ready to tell you their favorite author, the title of the latest book they read, why they liked it or not..... No wonder that TV in Malta has such a strong influence on public opinion!

Reading is something people like to do, like having any other hobby...Seems that this hobby is very low in the Maltese hobby list. A few weeks ago I was in a waiting line at Boffa Hospital, there was quite a long queue, from all the people in the waiting line, no one chose to read a book to pass the time, instead there where headed and "informed' arguments about every topic under the sun, including: what a flop Mater Dei hospital is since the windows don't open, and that St luke's was better since at least you could get some fresh air through the ward window, "in dept analysis" of the causes of inflation in Malta, how the first Mafia boss in Sicily was a Maltese!!!, Bekky VS Giselle and much more.....

Compare the same scene, same people on the London tube..if you would not be reading a book or a newspaper... you'd be as in conspicuous as if you were dressed in a Zorro Costume impersonating Bin Laden.

re book prices yes they are expensive in Malta, but even in European bookshops they are not cheap. Thank God for the internet ... i buy new second hand books online at fantastic prices online from Malta - www.ilovebooks.com.mt

People here don't read for the simple reason that reading in a foreign language is an uphill and tedious struggle. In a foreign language, even if you know it fairly well, you can't scan sentences and pick up their meaning immediately. Those for whom English is a second language battle their way through books sentence by sentence, even word by word. This removes most if not all of the pleasure. So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Our indifference to reading or our inability to read English easily? And please don't tell me that there are books in Maltese. Most of them are rubbish - not because they are written in Maltese, but because they are actually sub-standard. There are some good ones, yes, but not enough to keep a reading habit fed.

I don't know your view, dear people, but for me such figures are truly alarming!

And PN blamed the MLP for the Reception Class, labelling it the Repeater Class ...

I truly believe that what the changes brought about by the PN in the education sector were more directed to the more mature students, that is, those with the ability to vote, or close to ...

The younger generation need to be planted and grown in a new culture. Kids spend more time playing video games and looking at TV programmes that they lost interest in books and in what is educational, to the expense of the fictional. This is the culture change that is required. Quality of life is not only about having a computer and a TV in the kids' bedrooms ... but also of forming them into becoming an educated generation for tomorrow.

No wonder the great majority of today's University graduates find it difficult to write in English and Maltese. One problem as I see it, is the unreasonable, excessive cost of imported books. It's good to know that if you buy books online from the UK they will cost you as much as 50% less than what they would cost you in bookshops here. And you get them postage-free in just 4/5 days.