Malta is one of the worst performers when it comes to illiteracy, placing 25th out the 27 EU members with only Romania and Bulgaria faring worse.
According to the last report, some 36% of Maltese people are classified as illiterate, when compared to the EU average of 19.7% and top country Finland – at 8.1%
It is evidently clear that something needs to be done to stem the phenomenon and hopefully, reverse it. In the age of tablets, mobile phones and electronic books, the old fashioned love for the printed book is fading.
Many people still enjoy the smell of a book and the romance it brings with it in running one’s fingers over the print. There is still a lot of love for books out there, but it is fading.
Literacy does not only extend to being able to read books. It is a fundamental took for modern life. If we look at one of today’s news stories, a young motorist was fined €800 because although he was a capable driver, he could not pass his theory test because he could not read or write.
People with low literacy are less likely to finish school, more likely to be unemployed, especially in times of crisis, and more likely to suffer from poor health. ambition. Children of adults with poor literacy skills are more likely to struggle in reading.
Reading and writing are more important and relevant than ever before. The labour market requires ever higher literacy skills (by 2020, it is estimated that 35% of all jobs will require high-level qualifications compared to 29% today).
The Education Minister and the Prime Minister yesterday visited a Primary School in Luqa where books were donated by a private company (read more on page 6). Both said that fighting the scourge of illiteracy was of paramount concern. While the state and the private sector can do what they can to encourage people to read, it is up to us to actually do it.
Sitting down and reading a book is one of the best ways to improve one’s knowledge, vocabulary and spoken word. There is no substitute and that is a scientifically proven fact. The only way we are going to get people in the future to improve their reading and writing skills is for them to read. And to do that, we have to foster in our younger generations that love for books and reading that seems to be waning. School is a good time to start, but we have to start even younger than that. We need our children to read picture books and we need our teenagers to read comic books and teenage novels. It is only through encouraging them to do so that they will learn to love the feel of a book and enrich their minds in ways that no other medium will allow them to do.