Re-discovering the power of reading

  • 18:30 - 20:00
  • Wednesday 26 March 2025
  • Liszt Institute, Brussels, Treurenberg 10, 1000 Brussels

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Is reading in decline? Many people now lament that they find it hard to get through a book. Reading seems to have become a chore, even something of a lost art. Teachers in schools are trying all sorts of clever tricks, essentially coaxing children into reading by dressing it up as fun or a path to self-discovery. What’s happening to a fundamental intellectual habit?

We’ve reached a stage where young people have barely encountered a whole book, waiting until university to pick up the habit of reading. What’s more, we no longer simply talk about ‘reading’—it’s now a ‘literacy skill’. It’s become a technical matter, complete with methods, personal goals, critical approaches, and specific viewpoints, all neatly packaged in OECD manuals and measured by the rather dubious PISA surveys.

Yet these so-called ‘literacy skills’—carefully crafted, closely watched, and sanitised in social engineering labs—strip away the sheer delight of savouring, breathing in, and losing oneself in literature. The downgrading of literacy carries serious consequences across the board, from scientific and economic edge to social bonds and even how we use language. It’s too easy to pin the blame solely on digital distractions or the educational fallout from COVID. But could it be that the grand social engineering aims for literacy are themselves to blame? Or perhaps the impetus of multiculturalism, the erosion of distinct national reading traditions, and the fading of family customs that once cherished books are also part of the trouble?

Above all, why does it matter so much, here in the 21st century, to revive the personal passion and societal value of reading?


Join us at the Liszt Institute to wrestle with these questions alongside engaging speakers from journalism, literature, and history. Let’s plunge in together—free from oversight or restraint—into the enchanting and contentious world of reading.

 

Speakers:

  • Dr Hélène de Lauzun, historian, Paris correspondent for europeanconservative.com, guest author, Le Figaro, former French literature and civilization lecturer at Harvard University.
  • Dr Tim Black, columnist and books and essays editor at spiked. His writing also appears in the EU Observer, the Australian, the Independent, and La Repubblica. 
  • Dr Till Kinzel, humanities scholar, member of the board of the Foundation for the Promotion of Conservative Education and Research in Berlin, and advisor to the quarterly magazine TUMULT. Vierteljahresschrift für Konsensstörung.

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