"EDUCATING BY READING"

Educating by Reading [Wychowanie przez czytanie], a new book by Irena Koźmińska and Elżbieta Olszewska was published in August 2010 by Świat Książki.

It is a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to be proactive and raise a child in a manner that prevents problems, helps establish a good relationship, makes the child feel important and genuinely loved, builds his or her self-esteem, develops school education skills, teaches the child to enjoy reading and learning.

Today’s parents live under constant pressure to cope with too many responsibilities and are left with little time for their children. They tend to compensate for their absence by buying their children expensive toys and high-tech gadgets. Feeling abandoned, children strive to get attention from parents by behaving inappropriately – they become unruly, arrogant, aggressive, provocative and are getting bad grades in school. They also become easy prey to all sorts of criminals: drug dealers, religious sects, criminal gangs. Such problems can be easily avoided by spending time – quality time – with a child, not just watching TV or buying more and more new gimmicks as a substitute for a parents’ attention, but reading together, chatting and bringing about closeness.

Teachers are burdened by the necessity to implement content-laden curricula, they wrestle with child-rearing problems and are overloaded with endless administrative work, so they are afraid that reading to children as an additional assignment would consume the time needed to accomplish all other tasks. This is why teachers are not even trying to convince themselves that, paradoxically, by introducing read-aloud times into busy school day schedules they can cope with child-rearing problems and help children attain curriculum goals easier and faster. We hope that after reading this book, they will be convinced by its arguments.

Reading to a child supports its overall – emotional, spiritual, moral and intellectual development. 20 minutes a day is enough to ensure the child is backed by tremendous capital in every above-mentioned aspect of life. Is there any other way you can invest your time and benefit from a comparably high rate of return? (mch)

“Educating by Reading” is also an educational film of “ABCXXI – All of Poland Reads to Kids” Foundation directed by Bartek Konopka. Scriptwriters and narrators of the film, Foundation President Irena Koźmińska and Foundation Programme Director Elżbieta Olszewska, discuss therein the duties of parents toward children: satisfying emotional needs of children, reading aloud to them and teaching them values. Children, who are read to regularly by adults, as well as teachers and parents, who speak about the benefits of reading they have observed, took part in the film.

It popularises the idea of reading aloud to children on a daily basis at home, in kindergartens and schools, thanks to which children learn to think, develop their language skills, improve memory and imagination, enhance knowledge, while their mental, intellectual and social development are fostered. Reading aloud to children is an excellent method of education and the best investment for a child’s future.

The film was produced with sponsorship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, its distribution was co-funded by the Polish Film Institute.

The film was put as a gratuitous insert in the September 2007 issues of „Bliżej przedszkola” and „Wszystko dla Szkoły” magazines. (mch)