For this entry we
enlisted the help of Cutzi L.M. Quezada who is now part of our research team. Cutzi
holds a Master's Degree in European, American and Postcolonial Languages and Literatures
from the Università Ca’Foscari di Venezia. Since 2015 she has been part of the
doctoral programme ‘Letras Modernas’ at the Universidad Iberoamericana with
research on the picturebook collection ‘Los Especiales de A la Orilla del
Viento’ published by the FCE. She is also participates in the National
Programme ‘Salas de Lectura’ in the Mexican Ministry of Culture, with the group
‘Rayuela de Letras’.
For
some years, both government institutions and NGOs in Mexico have shown a
special interest in the reading habits of the population and during 2015, the
results of the two most recent surveys at national level were disseminated. The
first were from the study carried out by the Ministry of Education (SEP) and
CONACULTA (now the Ministry of Culture), in both urban and rural areas, with a
population from the age of 12 upwards. It included the theme of writing as well
as some elements of digital reading and is therefore known as the National Reading and Writing Survey
2015-2018. The second was carried out under the leadership of IBBY Mexico
with the support of publishing and educational institutions and particularly Banamex
(Nacional Bank of Mexico). Its particular focus was on consumer habits and the
use of digital media between 12 and 29 years of age but only in urban areas; this
is the First National Survey on the Use
of Digital Media and Reading.
Among
the general objectives of the survey carried out by the government, was finding
out about ‘the practices and habits of reading and writing’ in the country as
well as to develop public policies to promote reading. [1] In case of IBBY/Banamex’s survey, the aim was
to ‘identify the consumer habits and the use of digital media among young
Mexicans’,[2] along with finding out
about the impact that digital media has had on reading culture, how it cohabits
with printed media and what interests and needs of young people are satisfied
through reading digital and printed media.
Given
the importance of these surveys, we decided to go back to (see blog entry from
14 January 2016) some of the most relevant results of these surveys related to the
ages of 12-15 in order to consider them along with the our findings on the Reading Changes project. Although the qualitative
aspects are not comparable, the qualitative aspects of our research allow us to
delve into some of the findings. The following observations have resulted from
this deeper look.
Both
national surveys can be considered complementary, at least for the sector between
12 and 29 years of age. However, within the IBBY/Banamex survey, young people
between 12 and 14 represent 19% of the sample, while in the SEP/CONACULTA survey,
those between 12 and 17 represent only 14.23%. This sector is therefore not
well represented, despite the fact that it is a critical one in terms of reading
practices.
The
results of the surveys claim that more reading is done between the ages of 12
and 17 than in later years (even if, according to IBBY/Banamex, they don’t
identify as, or aspire to be, readers – something we also noted in our study). Also,
according to IBBY/Banamex, 61% of young people between 14 and 15 read for mainly
for pleasure or entertainment and SEP/CONACULTA informs us that at this age 4.2
books are read per year for pleasure compared to the average of 3.5 books in
the rest of the population. In our study we also found evidence that readers
approach literary texts for pleasure or entertainment (a motivation that is therefore
not exclusive to digital media).
On
the other hand, in this phase the decline and even abandonment of the reading
habit also begins. In addition, in Mexico, school attendance decreases with
age, and particularly from the age of 15, from which it goes down from 90% to
60%.[3] This period therefore
represents a final opportunity for institutional mediators to influence and fortify
reading habits and to make the most of, and maintain, the pleasure factor
related to this activity. However, in order to do so, it is necessary for these
mediators and the wider public to reflect on what is understood by ‘reading’ at
the start of the 21st century.
One
surprising aspect of these surveys was that, given most efforts around reading
promotion and mediation in the country are directed at younger children, neither
included children younger than 12 years old. We believe there is an urgent need
to include this population in reading surveys in order to make sense of current
changes.
Another
observation we would like to stress has been expertly made by Néstor García
Canclini, a renowned anthropologist who works in Mexico and who led the publication
of an important study in 2015, Hacia una
antropología de los lectores (Towards an anthropology of readers), together
with a team of researchers and expert consultants in the field of reading. It
responded, in the first instance, to the alarmist surveys of SEP/CONACULTA from
2006 and 2015[4]
which emphasized the number of books published and read and used instruments
which García Canclini calls ‘bookcentric surveys’. This anthropologist’s enquiries
centred on two key ideas: the exchange or social organization of readers: ‘how
readers from different societies, ages and formation –in different formats:
paper or digital- and how they interact in the school at work or in everyday
communication. How different readers organize themselves […] to find out and communicate
about new publications, from Internet sites or social networks.’ (XIII)
This
aligns with the reading groups or communities from our project that encouraged the
exchange and socialization between participants through actions in which the
mediator was an interested agent, responsible for the respectful and
stimulating process of the interaction. In Reading
Changes, we applied our interest to specific groups of readers in secondary
schools (urban and semi-rural) to derive our knowledge from them, in a clear
and direct manner, while trying at the same time to have them reflect on their
reading experience by noticing the many things they read daily and thus
desacralizing the act of reading and locating it in the everyday and beyond
printed books. This discovery widened their perspective of the act of reading and
removed the stigma of not being considered a reader according to more
traditional views. So, as García Canclini argues, knowing how to read today means
‘understanding how we can manage and prioritize heterogeneous contents in the
exuberance of contemporary information. Filtering, discriminating and choosing.’
(20)
Finally,
another problem with these surveys and other studies is that the changes in reading
supposedly due to the digital era are often generalized and applied to the whole
population. From our own research, we realized that the use of the Internet,
computers, electronic tablets and smartphones is not as widespread as it is
usually believed: only a few of those young people owned one of these devices
and again, only a few had Internet at home. We observed that their relationship
with reading continues to be mainly through the printed word leading us to
speculate that the 14 to 15 year olds we worked with are actually still part of
a ‘generation in transition’: they know about the digital world and have some access
to it but it is not yet an integral part of their daily lives or reading
experiences. The findings from the surveys, mainly, that 8 out of 10 young
people (IBBY/Banamex) or 77.8% of the general population have internet in their
homes (SEP/CONACULTA), did not reflect what we found, perhaps because the national
studies concentrated on urban areas. Even García Canclini’s study was limited
to Mexico City and therefore to a population which is very different from the
rest of the country (it is enough to note that in this city there are 470
bookshops and although they are few compared to the total population, there are
still many more than in the provinces).
In
a country with such different ‘realities’ as Mexico, with huge economic
inequality, care must be taken when making generalizations about how reading is
changing and it is important to complement quantitative studies with
qualitative research, with specific groups of readers, beginning at a younger
age and in diverse geographical locations.
Cutzi L.M. Quezada,
Laura Guerrero y Evelyn Arizpe
References
Encuesta
nacional de lectura y escritura 2015-2018. México: SEP/CONACULTA,
2015. PDF. 24 Feb. 2016. <https://observatorio.librosmexico.mx/encuesta.html>
García Canclini, Néstor et. al. Hacia una antropología de los lectores.
Madrid, México: Fundación Telefónica, UAM, 2015.
Presentación
de la Encuesta nacional de lectura y escritura 2015-2018.
México: SEP/CONACULTA, 2015. PDF. 24 Feb. 2016. <https://observatorio.librosmexico.mx/encuesta.html>
Primera
encuesta nacional sobre consumo de medios digitales y lectura.
México: IBBY/Banamex, 2015. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
<http://www.ibbymexico.org.mx/images/ENCUESTA_DIGITAL_LECTURA.pdf>
[1] https://observatorio.librosmexico.mx/encuesta.html
[2]
http://www.ibbymexico.org.mx/images/ENCUESTA_DIGITAL_LECTURA.pdf
[4] The IBBY/Banamex study was
released at the end of 2015.
