Three pillars of developing reading culture

A community bookshelf at Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens

A developed reading culture must be based on the development of three pillars, which are the behavior, values ​​and healthy reading standards of managers, state management agencies; of the social community and of each individual in society. But the focus and ultimate goal of developing a reading culture comes from each member of society.

The behavior, values ​​and healthy reading standards of each individual in society are their reading habits, reading interests and healthy reading skills. That is the foundation of a learning society, of lifelong learning, a requirement and also a challenge of modern society.

For managers and state management agencies

The reading behavior, values ​​and standards of managers and state management agencies are policies, guidelines and daily behaviors. These activities create a legal corridor to develop the reading culture of the community. In recent years, the Party and state management agencies have issued many resolutions and legal documents with many new points to develop the reading culture, such as:

Directive 42-CT/TW dated August 25, 2004 of the Secretariat clearly states: "Taking care of developing the reading culture needs of all classes of people, organizing and developing publishing forces and networks to ensure full and correct response to the target audience and location, paying special attention to rural, remote, isolated and mountainous areas.....

By 2010, strive to bring books to the district level and bring books to most communes to achieve the target of 6 books/person/year. Focus on consolidating and developing the library system and reading rooms, first of all at the grassroots level."

The Library Law issued on November 21, 2019, in Article 30 clearly states: "April 21 is Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day. And affirms the development of reading culture through activities such as: Organizing activities to form reading habits in families, schools, agencies, and organizations nationwide; instructing reading methods, skills, and exploiting information resources for children at preschool libraries and general education libraries".

Decision 329/QD-TTg in 2017 approving the Project on developing reading culture in the community until 2020, with a vision to 2030, issued by the Prime Minister, clearly states the goal: "Building and developing reading habits, needs, skills and movements (printed and electronic publications) among all classes of people, especially among youth, teenagers, pupils and students, and focusing on people in rural areas and areas with difficult socio-economic conditions; improving the reading environment; contributing to improving people's knowledge, developing thinking, creativity, nurturing personality and soul, enhancing awareness of law compliance, forming a healthy lifestyle among people and Vietnamese society, promoting the building of a learning society".

Decision 1862/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister: On organizing Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day, affirming the position, role and importance of books in improving knowledge, skills, developing thinking, educating and training human personality; encouraging and developing the reading movement in the community, creating a favorable environment; forming the habit of reading in families, schools, agencies, organizations, contributing to building a learning society.

In the Charter of Primary and Secondary Schools at all levels issued by the Ministry of Education and Training on September 4, 2020, Article 24 at the primary level and Article 16 at the secondary level are as follows: "Build and develop a reading culture and reading habits of staff, teachers, and students in the school. Organize students to read in the library, in the classroom or borrow documents to take home, organize reading sessions at the library, organize reading promotion activities and educational activities using information from libraries".

Resolutions and legal documents as above have been directed by authorities at all levels to create many activities contributing to the development of the Publishing industry and reading culture in the community, specifically the Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day on April 21 every year held in many provinces and cities, with many book fairs and reading promotion activities, contributing to spreading the reading culture, attracting a large number of people, especially young readers, to books and increasingly loving books.

For the social community

The behavior, values ​​and reading standards of the social community are the development of organizations, unions and professional associations related to reading such as: Vietnam Publishing Association, Library Association, Writers Association, or organizations such as Women's Union, Youth Union, or volunteer organizations and groups... have had many activities to honor writers, publishers, and contribute to the activities of promoting writing, promoting reading, and developing reading culture in the community.

For example, the Vietnam National Book Award organized by the Vietnam Publishing Association has had a positive impact on the writing and publishing team, spreading widely, creating great interest and support in the professional community and a large number of readers.

Or the "Reading Culture Ambassador" Contest jointly organized by the cultural sector, the education sector, and the library system has attracted tens of thousands of students to participate, and has spread widely across the country. The Youth Union, Women's Union, Writers' Association, agencies, and localities also have many activities such as launching creative writing, awarding prizes to authors' works, reading and writing review competitions... or hundreds of charitable organizations such as the Humanitarian Bookshelf, the Good Book Project for Primary School Students... also contribute to the development of reading movements among the general public.

For each individual

The behavior, values ​​and healthy reading standards of each individual in society are their reading habits, reading interests and healthy reading skills. That is the foundation of a learning society, of lifelong learning, a requirement and also a challenge of modern society.

Reading habits, formed from childhood, contribute to forming reading habits and developing reading culture in the community. It is necessary to analyze in depth the reading habits of Vietnamese people.

According to the data of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution (Ministry of Information and Communications) in the 2022 summary table, the total number of publications submitted for deposit was 38,029 publications (up 15.42%) with 598 million copies (up 49.5%) are impressive growth figures that show the superiority of our industry in 2022 compared to previous years. In particular, the average publication rate per capita reached 6.02 (up 47.3%), achieving a rate of over 6 books/person/year. After 12 years, we have implemented Directive 42 of the Central Committee, which set out 6 books/person/year for 2010.

Regarding the book consumption market, in 2022, the entire industry published 519 million copies of books (an increase of 33% compared to 2021, an increase of 18% compared to 2019 before the pandemic: 440 million copies). This is truly an impressive growth figure, the highest ever in the book consumption market, demonstrating the remarkable achievements of the entire industry's efforts in such a gloomy socio-economic context.

However, if we analyze the book structure, textbooks, exercise books, teachers, college and university curricula account for 52.74%, while other books contributing to the development of reading culture only account for about 48% of the total of nearly 600 million copies of books, which is 288 million copies/100 million people, or 2.98 books per person per year. Indeed, the ratio of nearly 3 books/person/year is too low.

The revenue figure for the entire publishing industry is nearly4,000 billion VND. Book publishing revenue is4,500 billion VNDspeaks to the weakness of our country's publishing industry. The entire publishing industry's revenue is approximately the same as the above figure.4,000 billion VNDof just one Long Chau pharmacy chain in 2022!

Looking at the countries in the region near us, Southeast Asia and Asia, what do we see?

They have taken many measures to build the habit of reading for the community from childhood in the family and school environment. For example, Malaysia and Indonesia have a 15-minute reading period for students every day arranged in the program framework. The Mayor of Jakarta, former Minister of Education of Indonesia told us so in 2019. Or like Korea, they have formed the habit of parents reading with their children at least 3 times a week, each time is 30 minutes. And in Thailand, in a survey of 55,920 families, in 2015, it was shown that children under 6 years old read 71 minutes/day, young people read 94 minutes/day, people of working age read 61 minutes/day, and the elderly read 44 minutes/day.

Thus, the issue of improving reading ability and developing reading culture based on the impact of forming reading habits in the community is an important task. Because of such high reading ability, the purchasing power of books increases, contributing to the growth of the publishing industry of countries.

Recommendations

1. Establish a National Committee for the Development of Reading Culture in Vietnam. The Committee includes representatives of state management agencies related to reading, leading experts in fields related to reading, representatives of social organizations such as the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the Women's Union, the Veterans Association, the Science and Technology Association, the Vietnam Farmers' Association... The Committee is under the Government, headed by a Deputy Prime Minister.

The Committee is responsible for drafting a comprehensive and fundamental development strategy for Vietnam's reading culture, building long-term plans for developing reading culture, and organizing, urging, and supervising the activities of state agencies, associations... related to reading according to the strategies and plans approved by the state.

The Committee also has the task of advising and consulting the highest state agencies when issuing legal documents related to the development of reading culture (*).

The upcoming revised and supplemented Publishing Law needs to add a provision on developing a reading culture.

Vietnam Publishing Association: Conducts periodic research every five years on the current reading situation in society as a basis for developing long-term plans for comprehensive and synchronous development of reading culture. The results of sociological surveys on a national scale aim to determine the current reading situation of the population. What percentage of the population has a personal library. Do they buy books? How many books are bought in a year in low-income families, middle-income families and high-income families. How do they use public libraries and other library systems (what percentage of the population). Who introduces books to them (library staff, booksellers, friends, parents, teachers...). Do families read aloud together? Do parents read to their children? (*)

It is recommended that the Education Sector has a policy to establish reading periods in the official timetable. Specifically, in addition to reading periods at the library ensuring a minimum of 2 periods/semester/class, and learning periods at the library ensuring a minimum of 1 period/semester/subject or interdisciplinary (according to Circular 16), it is recommended that the Education Sector directs the increase of reading periods in class in self-study periods: 1 period/week, in extended reading periods: 1 period/week for Vietnamese language, grades 1, 2, 3... to promote reading promotion activities and educational activities using information (publications) of publishers. The Publishing Sector needs to cooperate with the Education Sector to build a List of Documents (Publications) by topic, subject, and class to serve as a fundamental solution for the innovation of teaching and learning using current published documents.

Propose that the Department of Culture add the criteria for building family bookcases to the general criteria of Building a Cultural Family (this regulation is included in Decision No. 329/QD-TTG dated March 15, 2017 of the Prime Minister on approving the project to develop reading culture in the community until 2020, with a vision to 2030).

2. Social community: We would like to request that state management units in the publishing industry coordinate with associations, unions, and professional social organizations to organize activities that contribute to the development of reading culture such as competitions, creative writing campaigns, Book Awards, Book Awards by gender, by administrative area, Reading Culture Ambassador Competition, Growing Up with Books Competition, Book Fair, Book Street...

Hopefully, with the participation of the entire political system and society, the publishing career and the development of reading culture in our country with the most favorable conditions will create even stronger developments in the coming time.

According to Zing