Port of Byblos, Lebanon (Source: http://www.aaa-arch.com/)
We
travel from Catalonia to Lebanon in this new entry also based on a doctoral
study. Nayla summarizes some of her findings and, most importantly, reflects on
how what reading means for young people living in contexts of insecurity, a
theme we have also highlighted in our research in Mexico and which,
unfortunately, is relevant in so many countries around the world. Once again we
note how research into reading and other literacy practices is enriched by young people’s voices and their views on the impact of historical and current social
and political contexts on these practices.
Nayla Aramouni grew up in Lebanon where
she completed her undergraduate degree in Education at the American University
of Beirut. She spent the early days of her career there, working to encourage
reading as a teacher, an educational bookstore manager, and in an educational
company. She travelled to the UK in 2008 and completed an MPhil in Children’s
Literature and a PhD in Education at the University of Cambridge. She is
currently programmes coordinator and grants scheme manager at an international
non-profit organization in Cambridge, UK and continues to devote time to young
people and their reading.
A few years ago I embarked on a PhD which
investigated the attitudes towards reading of young adults in Lebanon. This was
not an arbitrary choice. First of all, I was born and raised in Lebanon, and I
was continually struck while growing up (and when I was all done growing up) by
how many people claimed they loved to read and how few people actually did. I
hardly ever saw anyone reading. Not in cafes, not in doctors’ waiting rooms,
not in the playground, teachers’ staffroom, or any public space at all. Yet reading
was, nominally, highly regarded and valued. Beauty pageant contestants and CVs
across the land claimed reading as a hobby.
Lebanon is a beautiful and intriguing
country, with a lot to offer. However, it is also volatile and complex. You
will rarely come across any mention of it that fails to mention its
15-year-long civil war, the effects of which are still very pronounced. Years
of instability have created what the Lebanese tend to call “The Situation”, an
all-encompassing term for the problems within the country, which affect every
aspect of life in Lebanon – including, as I discovered, young adults’ reading.
View of Beirut taken near my family home
in the town, Brummana (Photo credit: my sister-in-law, Stacy)
“The Corniche”, Beirut, Lebanon (Source: www.
http://www.beirut.com/l/25110)
My investigation began with a definition
of terms such as ‘reading for pleasure’. I wanted to focus my investigation on
reading that was done primarily for pleasure.
It didn’t matter what was being read, so long as the main motivation was
pleasure. For example, I excluded from my study activities like reading an
online review of a mobile phone handset that the reader was considering buying.
Similarly, texts such as the back-stories and narratives that appear in many
video games were not considered, since these were being read to progress the
game. My study was underpinned by
theories of reading attitude acquisition and motivation, reading culture,
reader development, and reader response. The study was also informed by the
gaps I identified in the literature pertaining to reading in the Middle East
and Lebanon.
The
study took place at two privately run, secular, mixed-sex schools which had
libraries on site and used English as their language of instruction. My
participants were in their final year of school and were selected based on
their responses to a survey questionnaire I distributed to the students in their
year. I conducted semi-structured individual interviews with each of them and
returned later to conduct small-group interviews with those who were willing
and able to do so.
My first finding was good news. Every one
of my participants, no matter how adamant they were about the fact that they
hated reading and never read, had at least one book that they described with
bright eyes and wide smiles. They had all had an experience with reading that
was extremely positive. That hadn’t been enough, however, to cultivate a habit
of reading for most.
When asked what they liked to read, those
I interviewed seemed to like the same kind of things as their counterparts all
over the world: Harry Potter, Twilight, Agatha Christie. Philosophy
was a surprisingly common favourite among those who claimed they did not enjoy
reading, with Sophie’s World coming
up as a favourite book more often than, for example, Harry Potter.
However, the reasons why these students
enjoyed these books seemed to be slightly different from the reasons their
counterparts around the world might give. They read western fiction because it
was different to their own reality. They tended to avoid any work that had not
emerged from Europe or America, because they felt that most of the subject
matter in local literature pertained to war and suffering. According to several of my participants, because of “The Situation”, most readers in Lebanon
preferred not to read content that dealt too closely with topics that were
considered “violent”, “gruesome”, or “depressing”. Latent anxiety linked to “The Situation” also seemed to play
a role in limiting the amount of reading even among those who had positive
reading attitudes. Even with relatively good access to books, and even for
students highly motivated to read, the number of books read was relatively
small and overestimated by the readers themselves. Although the students with positive reading
attitudes were keen
readers who read widely, the number of
books they read was much smaller than the figures found for keen readers in
other studies from around the world (e.g. the U.K., U.S.A., and South Africa).
I also found that libraries were rarely used to obtain reading material. Books
were usually purchased from one of two bookstores, or, if this was too
inconvenient or costly, illegally downloaded online.
A branch of Librarie Antoine, one of two
bookstores frequented by my participants. during (top) and after (bottom) the
civil war. (Source: http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/la-tendance-de-jerome-garcin/20120531.OBS7164/saint-beyrouth-des-pres.html)
In terms of how reading was assigned in
schools, it was clear that being “forced” to read, as the participants put it,
did have its advantages when students were given a wide enough choice of books
to select from. This was particularly pronounced in
those identified as having negative or neutral attitudes towards reading (as determined by
the survey administered before the interviews), for whom it ensured that reading took place long and regularly enough
for a deeper level of engagement to be reached. The first school I worked with
assigned students two books to read over the summer, while the second gave
students a broad list of books from which they were allowed to select two. Those in the second group, who had
compulsory reading time but some choice over what they read, all acknowledged
the fact that they had engaged with and enjoyed at least one book in that year
of "forced" reading On the other hand,
all of the students in the other group, who were given no choice over what they
read, felt that this lack of choice made them “hate reading”.
Frank
Smith (1988) introduced the metaphor of a Literacy Club that illustrates the
belief that we learn to read and to enjoy reading by "joining the
club" of people we see ourselves as being like. What I found, however, was
that there can be different kinds of Literacy Clubs, each with its own culture
and rules of membership. One seemed to have a literacy club that was inclusive
in the sense that the majority of the school community had an interest in
reading and often recommended and engaged in discussions about books. There was
no sharp distinction between those who liked to read and those who didn’t. The
other had less respect and admiration for their teachers and peers as readers
and there was a sharp divide between those who read and those who did not.
Those who were readers saw themselves, and were seen by others, as part of an
elite group. Perhaps as a consequence, there was less personal engagement with
the material being read, since the act of reading seemed to be driven not only
by pleasure, but also by the desire to belong to the group of “readers” and
take on the traits associated with that group.
There
were several eye opening moments for me during the investigation. One of the
most notable for me was identifying The Situation as an influence on reading
attitudes and behaviour. Having been born and raised in it myself, I did not
see right away that there was an “it” at all. Only when I was analysing my
transcripts and reread (for the hundredth time) a quote from a participant
(whom I have called Rami) did it dawn on me.
I was both excited and deeply saddened by the sudden clarity. Rami loves
to read, but he described a time when he decided it wasn’t for him
anymore.
Actually, I was angry because it was the coming-of-age part
where I started to understand what Lebanon is, the situation, the whole
dilemma, and so I became angry and was like, ‘what’s the point of reading books
that had a lot of meanings and messages and images when the situation we live
in is not healthy and we could invest this same time in something else?’ I don’t know what
that other thing is. It was like an excuse, I don’t know.
Rami’s
thought process puts into words the extent to which young people’s reading in
Lebanon is influenced by their context. What he was reading about suddenly
became pointless as he saw it framed in his environment and subjected his hobby
to rational scrutiny. This created the “dilemma” or tension between what he loved
to do (reading) and what he felt his environment was forcing him to become. He,
like many others, however, knew instinctually that there were benefits to reading
that could have a positive impact on the world around him. This is what drove
him to reconsider his decision and continue to read. During the final stages of my PhD, new
research began to emerge about the ways in which reading fiction can enhance Theory
of Mind, relatedness, and empathy (Kidd & Castano 2013). Perhaps Rami once
felt that reading was pointless, given The Situation, but this new research
provides scientific evidence that his instinct about the benefits of reading was
correct. Reading fiction could help him make sense of and cope with the world
around him. It is yet another reason to strive to promote reading for pleasure
and provides further proof of how reading can change us and the world around
us.
Al
Amine, A., Abouchedid, K., Llabre, M., Hadi, F., Gharzeddine, M., Huri, M.,
& Maiky, C. (2008). The psychological conditions of children and youth
in Lebanon after the July 2006 war. Beirut, Lebanon: Lebanese Association
for Educational Studies and the Kuwait Society for the Advancement of Arab
Children
Kidd,
D., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind.
Science, 1(October), 1–6. doi:10.1126/science.1239918
Smith,
F. (1988). Joining the Literacy Club: Further Essays in Education.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
