Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Turkish Readers

Take comfort (!) in the fact that Malaysia isn't the only country with dismal reading statistics. ('Tis indeed a world wide phenomena.) Turkey Zaman reports [found via] :
Statistics shows that most Turks do not read on a regular basis. In fact, the average Turk spends only $10 a year on books. According to the United Nations 2007 Human Development Report, Turkey ranks 101st among 177 countries for its level of adult literacy. While Turks spend an average of five hours a day watching television, they devote only six hours in an entire year to reading. Furthermore, only 4.5 percent of the population reported that they are regular readers.
The article talks about some initiatives aimed at getting people to read more. This I thought was great :
Some judges have also gotten into the act by ordering minor offenders to read books. Murat Şenol Demirci, who was convicted for firing shots into the air at a celebration of his friend's enlistment, was sentenced to reading four books every month for one year.
Not surprisingly, the offender seemed very happy with his punishment!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

But we're still better than Ghana!
:-)))

- Poppadumdum

Anonymous said...

We also share something else with Turkey, we're the only other Muslim democracy on the planet :)

PS. Don't they all feel like stuffing ? :)

Anonymous said...

it'd be great if the malaysian judges would do the same thing for parking tickets... ;)

Anonymous said...

5 hrs a day watching tv?!

-Jen