Writer: Ioanna Balafa
Through the pages of literary books we have traveled in human history and in real or imaginary worlds. Book pages remind us of ourselves, of our own little moments, family memories, healed or revived wounds while others have touched us so much by their words that almost changed our vision of the world. Therefore, the value of literature is socially interpreted and contribute to an overall intercultural education.
The literary production and reading consists a social and pedagogical challenge for the development of a society as an inseparable part of it just like the art forms, painting or photography. By short stories or novels, reading should have a place in our daily lives and education and never be on the sideline. Moreover, writing and its changing styles go along with the current developments by covering different people’s needs who meet each other somewhere between the words, they“grasp”the world and make it from the start.
For many people writing is a refuge where they can interpret the world according to their own principles by giving their meanings and creating individual or collective identities through personal and historical experiences. During reading, we temporary hospitalize some other protagonists in our world, who may have much more in common with us than we imagine. We have the chance to discover cultural and moral norms as well as different behaviors. At the same time, literature is the most vivid example of the language vitality because words co-exist with the human evolution as the most open communication and dialogue system while examining new ways of existing.
For many, reading can be a mean of salvation during difficult personal situations and losses. Books can help someone to compare, to imagine, to dream or to reposition various situations. Literature should obviously be taught in schools in a really serious way, for the same obvious reasons as it should be a strong part of adult reading. As an integral part of the educational process, literature develops communication and the student’s reading skills, as it cultivates knowledge through verbal exploration and aesthetics while highlighting the multifaceted student-teacher. Books and literature reinforce students by offering them a different way of troubleshooting while complex concepts of literary can contribute to the encouraged development of students’ oral and writing speech. Also, the reading process trigger feelings and literature teaching makes us meet with worlds, people and forms that otherwise we couldn’t have encountered.
Literature not only contributes to our entertainment but also to our personal maturation, as what we might expect from each new book we read is the revealing of another possible linguistic code so that we can say that we have evolved and conquered if not all, at least most of our reading skills. Literature sets goals as spiritual growth, expression, creation, critical thinking, creating dialogue -as the same text is perceived differently from each reader not meaning that someone is right or wrong- and the creation of free human conscience that can distinguish what kind of book is better. Therefore, reader’s creativity deserves to be studied as much as author’s creativity.
Well expressed words can heal us and make us “travel”. You should indulge in them. And when you are asked where have you traveled you can rightfully answer that you have been around the world. In Japan by Murakami, in Russia by Dostoevsky, that you saw crimes and punishments, you saw two moons borned in sky, you saw death through the eyes of Primo Levi. You saw the strange Kafka’s trials, the eerie mysteries and discoveries of Edgar Allan Poe, the allegorical but as well as the real Sarmago’s world, the Greek immigration to of Sourounis’s Germany, you were taught the hope through the Ralph Ellison’s invisible man. And the journey still goes on.
(published on www.tovivlio.net)
Through the pages of literary books we have traveled in human history and in real or imaginary worlds. Book pages remind us of ourselves, of our own little moments, family memories, healed or revived wounds while others have touched us so much by their words that almost changed our vision of the world. Therefore, the value of literature is socially interpreted and contribute to an overall intercultural education.
The literary production and reading consists a social and pedagogical challenge for the development of a society as an inseparable part of it just like the art forms, painting or photography. By short stories or novels, reading should have a place in our daily lives and education and never be on the sideline. Moreover, writing and its changing styles go along with the current developments by covering different people’s needs who meet each other somewhere between the words, they“grasp”the world and make it from the start.
For many people writing is a refuge where they can interpret the world according to their own principles by giving their meanings and creating individual or collective identities through personal and historical experiences. During reading, we temporary hospitalize some other protagonists in our world, who may have much more in common with us than we imagine. We have the chance to discover cultural and moral norms as well as different behaviors. At the same time, literature is the most vivid example of the language vitality because words co-exist with the human evolution as the most open communication and dialogue system while examining new ways of existing.
For many, reading can be a mean of salvation during difficult personal situations and losses. Books can help someone to compare, to imagine, to dream or to reposition various situations. Literature should obviously be taught in schools in a really serious way, for the same obvious reasons as it should be a strong part of adult reading. As an integral part of the educational process, literature develops communication and the student’s reading skills, as it cultivates knowledge through verbal exploration and aesthetics while highlighting the multifaceted student-teacher. Books and literature reinforce students by offering them a different way of troubleshooting while complex concepts of literary can contribute to the encouraged development of students’ oral and writing speech. Also, the reading process trigger feelings and literature teaching makes us meet with worlds, people and forms that otherwise we couldn’t have encountered.
Literature not only contributes to our entertainment but also to our personal maturation, as what we might expect from each new book we read is the revealing of another possible linguistic code so that we can say that we have evolved and conquered if not all, at least most of our reading skills. Literature sets goals as spiritual growth, expression, creation, critical thinking, creating dialogue -as the same text is perceived differently from each reader not meaning that someone is right or wrong- and the creation of free human conscience that can distinguish what kind of book is better. Therefore, reader’s creativity deserves to be studied as much as author’s creativity.
Well expressed words can heal us and make us “travel”. You should indulge in them. And when you are asked where have you traveled you can rightfully answer that you have been around the world. In Japan by Murakami, in Russia by Dostoevsky, that you saw crimes and punishments, you saw two moons borned in sky, you saw death through the eyes of Primo Levi. You saw the strange Kafka’s trials, the eerie mysteries and discoveries of Edgar Allan Poe, the allegorical but as well as the real Sarmago’s world, the Greek immigration to of Sourounis’s Germany, you were taught the hope through the Ralph Ellison’s invisible man. And the journey still goes on.
(published on www.tovivlio.net)
