Galo Guerrero-Jimenez
Anthropologists, pedagogues, linguists, and specialists in literacy issues are still concerned about why it is that in school education, and despite the enormous efforts of a large majority of teachers, it has not been possible to learn to read in such a way that one can go beyond mere literal comprehension, in which schoolchildren and teachers, and all readers and writers, can have a high cognitive and intellectual awareness that allows them, in practice, to realize that, as the researcher Delia points out, Lerner, “reading is delving into other possible worlds. It is to inquire into reality to better understand it, it is to distance oneself from the text and assume a critical stance towards what is said and what is meant, it is to obtain a certificate of citizenship in the world of written culture…” (2014).
And the problem is not only with school education, it is with the general public; It is about a very high percentage of citizens graduated from the university and in other formal contexts who have not been able to establish a reading and writing practice in whose pragmatics the seal of knowledge is printed so that their profession is elevated to the category of scientific and fully assumed from the humanistic field, so that this citizen occupies a position of authentically livable pre-eminence in the field of communication with all his peers and, therefore, is a benchmark of love and commitment to his profession or occupation so that from his socio-cognitive experience contributes to exalt your personal condition, because you know that you are prepared at the highest level of your professional and humanistic greatness to work and act in order to respect that a whole human conglomerate deserves thanks to the good acting that your knowledge allows you to move with solvency in that radically ethical, aesthetic and linguistic existence.
Of course, reaching this range of human greatness is only possible from a continuous educational practice committed to reading the great ancient and contemporary thinkers who, from their condition as researchers, scientists, humanists, writers, philosophers, of artists and entities educated to the highest degree of their commitment to the domain of their specialty, have been able to establish principles, norms, fictions, theories and statements that, as substantive ideas and duly registered in a text, remain embodied forever in a book or document physically and/or digitally so that every literate citizen can enter, not only from formal education, but from their personal contingent voluntarily assumed from a mental disposition that allows each one of the readers to freely choose a text to read it thinking that, as Mariasun Landa points out, it is about “a need as human as dreaming, laughing, or play. Because for me it has been a way of pleasure, comfort, company and even self-knowledge. Perhaps, since I was little I have sought in reading, to be something more than what I was. See through other eyes, imagine with other imaginations, feel with other hearts” (2002), which is, in effect, the value that life has from that great reality of written words.
In any case, according to the opinion of Xabier Gantzarin, collected by Patxi Zubizarreta: “reading is not a higher and more enriching action than any other. If someone likes to read, if he likes literature and is willing to travel to the hidden places of his interior, great. But if you don’t like to read and if you prefer to go to the mountains, ride a bike, sunbathe or play soccer, I’m not going to force you to read” (2002); Well, it seems that the failure of reading may be there, when someone forces them to read, perhaps because they have never had the opportunity to read something deeply significant, real, possible and necessary to exalt their human condition.