Reading habits in Slovenia and of the students of teacher-training university programmes: Do the shoemaker’s children go barefoot? Miha Kovač, Mojca Kovač Šebart, Tadej Vidmar and Jasna Mažgon
Summary: In the article we research the foundations of complaints of university teachers that students do not read any more, that they do not study for the exams using books, that they do not have the “intellectual condition” to read more demanding themes in the book-format any more. Consequently, their ability to express themselves verbally and in writing as well as their articulation and reasoning are diminished and they also establish their opinions on the base of their own experiences, to which they attribute a general validity. The findings are based on the comparison of the data from the survey of the reading habits in Slovenia Knjiga in bralci VI, and the study of reading and studying habits, conducted on the students of the teacher-training university programmes of the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana. We established that reading habits of students included in the study were better than the average in Slovenia; however, concerning is the fact that considering the profession, for which they are being educated, the share of no-readers is rather high. The study also shows that reading education in the family plays a key role in the forming of an adult reader, as well as it stresses the importance of the compensatory role of the preschool education.