Children Reading in Latin America

In education, the basic elementary, fundamental studies are known in English as the threeR's --- reading, writing and arithmetic (so called from the humorous shortened reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic.  Of these three studies, reading is perhaps regarded as more prominent; after all, you can't write well if you can't read and you can't do arithmetic if you don't understand the assignments.  Now reading is not just something that is done in the formal setting of a school.  A child can in fact read anywhere and anytime that he/she wants, and a child becomes better at reading with more practice.  From the viewpoint of human resources, it is important to understand what, how and when children read.

According to the 1998 Pan Latin American Kids Study, 13.5% of Latin American kids between the ages of 7 and 11 read books during the preceding weekend.  This seems to be a somewhat unusual way of posing the question.  However, this was considered to be an easy, comprehensible way for putting a concrete time frame to capture actual reading behavior, as compared to 'soft' questions such as "Do you like reading?"  or "Do you read a lot?" and 'hard' questions such as "How many different books did you read in the last 30 days?" or "How much time did you spend reading books in the last 7 days?"

In the following table, we present some standard demographic breakdown of the reading behavior.  There is certainly substantial variation across countries.  As the child grows older, he/she builds up a bigger, better vocabulary and grammar and the exercise of reading becomes easier, more interesting as well as rewarding.

(source:  Pan Latin-American Kids Study, Audits & Surveys Worldwide)

Reading books is just one kind of reading activity, although it is usually accorded primary importance due to its role in the educational process as well as cultural transmission.  In the survey, the children were also asked directly, "Do you read comics?",  "Do you read magazines?" and "Do you read newspapers?"  Here, the answers are simply "Yes" or "No" without any regard for varying frequencies.  In any case, according to the following table, we see that reading of various kinds of printed material are in fact highly correlated.  Thus, a child interested in reading will read more of everything.

(source:  Pan Latin-American Kids Study, Audits & Surveys Worldwide)

What other factors affect reading levels?  According to a number of empirical studies, reading among children has been displaced by television viewing.  Obviously, a child that is constantly glued to the television set will have no time to read.  In the following table, we show the relationship between reading and certain television characteristics.  The first thing to note is that the presence/absence of television does not correlate in the hypothesized direction.  Since television penetration is nearly universal in Latin America, the absence of television probably indicates extremely poverty, a condition in which reading materials are unlikely to be found.  The presence of multichannel television with its many more television channels does not bring reading levels down.  However, it does appear that children in households with limits on television viewing (e.g. "no television until after you've done your homework" or "lights out after nine o'clock") are heavier readers.

(source:  Pan Latin-American Kids Study, Audits & Surveys Worldwide)

According to the 1998 Pan Latin American Kids Study, the most significant thing that affects children reading is the guidance of the parents.  In the following table, we have classified the kids according to the frequency with which they read together with their parents.  The effects on the reading levels of the kids are striking.  This table may also explain some of the observed data in the demographic analyses in our first table.  Certainly, highly educated parents are more likely to be encouraging and teaching their own children to read.

(source:  Pan Latin-American Kids Study, Audits & Surveys Worldwide)

Of course, the idea is that reading becomes more attractive and interesting when it becomes an interactive group activity.  In the following table, we show the reading levels for kids who have various people to read to them.   Parents and siblings are the best influencers, and having no one to read to is positively detrimental.

(source:  Pan Latin-American Kids Study, Audits & Surveys Worldwide)

(posted by Roland Soong on 6/8/00)

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