Russian Girls and Boys Lacking in Reading Skills
The youth of Russia are not reading as much or as well as their Soviet era counterparts were. It’s not just the younger generation either, a recent survey by the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency shows that 63 percent of Russians read at least one book a year. In 1991 it was 79 percent. Even more telling is the statistic showing a 20 percent drop in the number of young people that read at least one book a year.
Many countries are experiencing a drop in reading due to recent technology advances. But Russia, which had long considered itself to have a well-read and educated population, considers the drop to be somewhat of a catastrophe. Another thing that is disappearing is the tradition of families taking time to read together. In the 1970’s eighty percent of parents read to their children, now only 7 percent do.
Reading newspapers is also on a decline from 61 percent of Russians reading them in 1991 to just 24 percent today.
Another survey resulted in the frightening statistic that the number of textbooks read by the average student in a month was one in 2005, compared to 4 in 1991. According to an official from the Center for Sociology of Education not only do students read less, they forget half of the books that they read.
