“When i Hear the Word Book I am Getting Nervous”: What Greek Primary School Pupils Believe about Books
On a daily basis, pupils work with books they are forced to read and, less frequently, with books, which they choose themselves. Nonetheless, it seems to be a commonplace to accept that children read books as a result of the rather hard pressure exerted on them by their parents and school. In this respect, and as far as children are concerned, books seem to be an object through which school and family oppression is transformed into coercion. Thus, the object that accumulates the knowledge, emotions and beauty of the human life and intellect is converted into an instrument of oppression, which children find hard to love and harder to engage in a constructive conversation with. The present paper investigates children's relationship with books as objects, that is, the attitudes that children have developed towards the specific object-symbol and the consequences ensuing from using and working with books. The basic research tools used were a questionnaire, interviews and discourse analysis of written texts (pupils' essays). The research demonstrated that pupils know scarcely little or little about books as objects and about their use, and also that their attitudes are fairly positive, but not the appropriate ones. In conclusion, it is worth pointing out that most of the research hypotheses were verified.
Keywords: Book, Children
Argyris Kyridis
Professor, Department of Nursery Education, University of Western Macedonia
|
Mimis Souliotis
Associate Professor, Department of Nursery Education, University of Western Macedonia
|
Dr. Paraskevi Golia
Dr, Pedagogic School, University of Western Macedonia
|
Stella Kassidou
Phd, Pedagogic School, University of Western Macedonia
|
Evagelos Drosos
Phd, Department of Nursery Education, University of Western Macedonia
|
Ref: B07P0060