About the Chronicle Review:
The title reads: “We can’t teach students to love reading”, at first I thought “no s**t” as I could have written books about how much I hated to read for school as a kid. And as I started to think more about it, I was pleasantly surprised by the notion that maybe there were other people out there that hated it as much as I did. It was never a question of whether or not I could read the material at hand; it was always the question of “why do I have to read this dry boring text that’s ultimately no fun? So I read on.
“But when you have access to thousands of articles, blogs, videos, and people with expertise on the topic, a good strategy is to skim first to get an overview.” (The Chronicle)
Their encouraging skimming now… WHAT? Skimming was the only tool I had in my possession to dig my way through 40 page essays, while looking for three quotes so I could write a two-page paper. Why didn’t old people have this epiphany back when I was in K-12?
“All this is to say that the idea that many teachers hold today, that one of the purposes of education is to teach students to love reading—or at least to appreciate and enjoy whole books—is largely alien to the history of education” (The Chronicle)
And I quote, “largely alien to the history of education”… Again, WHAT? How are teachers so good at convincing you that if you don’t love reading you won’t amount to anything? Maybe they thought if they told us the majority of people actually don’t like to read, then nearly every student would just stop reading. Either way they kept the secret well.
“Education is and should be primarily about intellectual navigation, about—I scruple not to say it—skimming well, and reading carefully for information in order to upload content. Slow and patient reading, by contrast, properly belongs to our leisure hours.” (The Chronicle)
This segment has abolished all my worries dealing with reading as an adolescent. I knew I was a smart kid, I just never could understand why I didn’t want to just sit down, grab a text book and educate myself. Now I get it, reading in school is supposed to be no fun. Funny thing is I read this article from first to last word and didn’t skim once, I wonder what that means?
You read the article from first to last word and didn't skim once, what does it mean? Probably that it wasn't written in lofty, scholarly prose, making it far more interesting and "easy" to read. My main beef with a lot of the texts we have to read in school is the scholarly discourse. Personally, I don't think it serves a purpose except to discourage "non-scholars" from reading it, and significantly decreasing my respect for the author and what they have to say.
ReplyDeleteI could not agree with you more. I have had multiple professors harp on "readability", yet most scholarly writing is far from readable to the majority of the world.
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