George Steiner, one of the most important universal thinkers of our time, in his conversations with the French journalist and writer Laura Adler, recorded in the great book The Long Saturday (translated by Thanos Samartsis, ed. Dom), says: “Reading has rather specific requirements. First of all, it requires a lot of silence. Silence has become the greatest luxury, the most expensive commodity in the world.” The second condition: “The secluded space of the house, where we and our book are, we can participate in this dialogue without the presence of others.” Then peace and privacy. Steiner’s third condition is the availability of books at home. “The great public libraries were the backbone of education and learning in the 19th century, and for many in the 20th. But having your own collection of books that you didn’t borrow is paramount.”

Educational and cultural institutions have a role to play in mitigating socio-economic disparities and working towards improving people’s living standards, given that this is determined by economic comfort as well as the cultural capital that a person possesses. The departure from the book in any form, not to mention the printed one, is an international phenomenon. As Steiner categorically puts it, “in big cities, silence is bought with gold,” personal time is non-existent, and mobile phone and tablet screens dominate our daily lives. Crucially, the OECD in PISA 2025 will also evaluate the ability of adolescents to broaden their horizons in the digital world.

Of course, since 2000 their evaluation in understanding of the text preceded. An assessment in which Greece is confidently striding forward. Today the Greek school, as defined by the detailed programs of the Ministry of Education as well as the actions of the Ministry of Culture, seems to be trapped in form without content. There is a decision of the Ministry of Education from 2022 to expand the network of school libraries, but in practice there are few schools that are interested in all school departments, and the work carried out in them is procedural and inefficient.

The curriculum suffocates under the weight of “basic” lessons, it does not give breath to something “alternative” like teaching children to read books at home, does not teach them to note those moments that impressed them, to enjoy them. And text comprehension has become a formal teaching of students how to write a statement of (trivial) ideas. As for homework, the workload of students does not allow them to read a literary text.

The Department of Culture, in turn, is practically absent; it has not built a bridge between reading and school practice. What writer regularly enters the classroom and offers a method for students to find “space” that will allow them to quietly enjoy a literary text, rather than repeating it like a parrot for a good grade? Therefore, any declarations end with heavy but empty pages…