Reading
16/04/16 05:24
There are plenty of public figures of whom I am aware, but whose lives I don’t follow closely. The actor Woody Allen has been in and out of the press for most of my life. Some of the stories didn’t make him sound like a very nice person. Others revealed a unique sense of humor that has its appeal. Recently I looked up a quote and was surprised to find that it is attributed to Woody Allen. I also was surprised that Woody Allen is now 80 years old. The quote is this: “To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.” I believe that God continues to pursue an active relationship with those who struggle with belief. People and religious institutions may sometimes be threatened or tend to write off those who disagree, but God loves people regardless of what belief system they embrace.
Here is another quote of Woody Allen: “I read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.” That pretty much says what I think about speed reading.
I read a lot. I read many online articles every day. I usually have three or more books that I am reading at the same time. I surround myself with books and reading is one of my favorite pastimes. But I also read for work and I read at work. Compared to some of my peers, I can read fairly quickly. Mostly, however, I read more books than others not because I read any faster, but because I devote more time to reading. I don’t watch very much television. I prefer to read a book when in a waiting room to watching the television. About a year ago the New York Daily News reported data from Nielsen that the average American watches 5 hours of TV per day. Children aged 2 - 11 watch over 24 hours of TV per week. The same report claimed that TV viewing time increases steadily as people age, with people over 65 averaging more than seven hours a day.
I do need to point out, however, that there is at least one flaw in Nielsen’s method of rating television watching. I know because our household has been selected to fill out the two week report for Nielsen at least three times. When you enter “no television watched” on every day of the survey, yours is discarded and not counted. As a result, the average is skewed, because the survey does not include those who do not watch television. Most weeks, I do watch a little television, and I watch several minutes of Internet videos that came from television on a regular basis. But I have tried to be consistent and not turn on the television at any time during the two weeks that our home is included in the Nielsen survey.
At any rate, according to Nielsen, people in my age group watch, on average nearly 44 hours of watching television each week. That’s a full-time job. Turn of the television and there is plenty of time for reading.
When I was in college and graduate school the required reading was significant and I had to learn not only how to read, but how to organize and retain the information in the books I read. I learned to analyze the structure of a book, getting a clear sense of its outline from the table of contents and other sources before diving into the page by page process. Often I could understand the structure of an argument before I read the details. I found that I could engage in fairly intelligent conversation about a book I had only skimmed. That skill enables me to make fairly quick decisions about which books to read and which to pass up.
That skill has also made me intensely suspicious of speed reading. Like the Woody Allen joke, I’m convinced that many people who claim expertise in speed reading are sacrificing comprehension in order to gain the speed. I’m pretty good at rapidly scanning a text to find a specific word or piece of information. I can get a general idea of what the text is about in a few minutes. To really understand a text, however, simply takes time.
I don’t think that the big challenge to understanding comes from seeing the words, but rather from the cognitive process of processing words into meaning. Strings of words require thought in order to gain the intended meaning. You have to think about the author’s intentions, the structure of the argument, and interplay of word upon word to really gain the meaning. Speed up the process and there is a direct trade off. You gain less understanding. Language comprehension is a complex intellectual task.
There are ideas and concepts that are best learned by reading. For those who don’t have the visual acuity for reading or who have various forms of dyslexia, audio books or having text read to them can be a reasonable substitute.
All of which brings me to another criticism of television. Recently I was in a waiting room while the oil was being changed in a vehicle. I glanced at a television set with the sound turned low. There was a scrolling “news feed” going across the bottom of the screen. I read the headlines that appeared. They repeated over and over again with no change in the 30 minutes or so that I paid attention. There wasn’t any significant content in the words. I had read substantial articles about each topic presented as “breaking news.” I guess if you have no other source, it probably would be worth knowing that the Pope visited with refugees on the island of Lesbos. There was no way of knowing from that television feed, however, that Pope Francis is making a concerted and careful effort to raise the world’s awareness of the worst European refugee crisis since World War II. He is asking the world to respond to a huge humanitarian crisis. You might be able to get the headlines from the television, but it takes a lot more information to understand the meaning of the top stories.
So I continue to read. I read articles. I read books. I try to delve deeply into complex ideas. And I continue to be suspicious of other media to provide the depth of understanding that is required in a complex world.
You must have a similar approach. After all, you have just read this very wordy blog post.
Here is another quote of Woody Allen: “I read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.” That pretty much says what I think about speed reading.
I read a lot. I read many online articles every day. I usually have three or more books that I am reading at the same time. I surround myself with books and reading is one of my favorite pastimes. But I also read for work and I read at work. Compared to some of my peers, I can read fairly quickly. Mostly, however, I read more books than others not because I read any faster, but because I devote more time to reading. I don’t watch very much television. I prefer to read a book when in a waiting room to watching the television. About a year ago the New York Daily News reported data from Nielsen that the average American watches 5 hours of TV per day. Children aged 2 - 11 watch over 24 hours of TV per week. The same report claimed that TV viewing time increases steadily as people age, with people over 65 averaging more than seven hours a day.
I do need to point out, however, that there is at least one flaw in Nielsen’s method of rating television watching. I know because our household has been selected to fill out the two week report for Nielsen at least three times. When you enter “no television watched” on every day of the survey, yours is discarded and not counted. As a result, the average is skewed, because the survey does not include those who do not watch television. Most weeks, I do watch a little television, and I watch several minutes of Internet videos that came from television on a regular basis. But I have tried to be consistent and not turn on the television at any time during the two weeks that our home is included in the Nielsen survey.
At any rate, according to Nielsen, people in my age group watch, on average nearly 44 hours of watching television each week. That’s a full-time job. Turn of the television and there is plenty of time for reading.
When I was in college and graduate school the required reading was significant and I had to learn not only how to read, but how to organize and retain the information in the books I read. I learned to analyze the structure of a book, getting a clear sense of its outline from the table of contents and other sources before diving into the page by page process. Often I could understand the structure of an argument before I read the details. I found that I could engage in fairly intelligent conversation about a book I had only skimmed. That skill enables me to make fairly quick decisions about which books to read and which to pass up.
That skill has also made me intensely suspicious of speed reading. Like the Woody Allen joke, I’m convinced that many people who claim expertise in speed reading are sacrificing comprehension in order to gain the speed. I’m pretty good at rapidly scanning a text to find a specific word or piece of information. I can get a general idea of what the text is about in a few minutes. To really understand a text, however, simply takes time.
I don’t think that the big challenge to understanding comes from seeing the words, but rather from the cognitive process of processing words into meaning. Strings of words require thought in order to gain the intended meaning. You have to think about the author’s intentions, the structure of the argument, and interplay of word upon word to really gain the meaning. Speed up the process and there is a direct trade off. You gain less understanding. Language comprehension is a complex intellectual task.
There are ideas and concepts that are best learned by reading. For those who don’t have the visual acuity for reading or who have various forms of dyslexia, audio books or having text read to them can be a reasonable substitute.
All of which brings me to another criticism of television. Recently I was in a waiting room while the oil was being changed in a vehicle. I glanced at a television set with the sound turned low. There was a scrolling “news feed” going across the bottom of the screen. I read the headlines that appeared. They repeated over and over again with no change in the 30 minutes or so that I paid attention. There wasn’t any significant content in the words. I had read substantial articles about each topic presented as “breaking news.” I guess if you have no other source, it probably would be worth knowing that the Pope visited with refugees on the island of Lesbos. There was no way of knowing from that television feed, however, that Pope Francis is making a concerted and careful effort to raise the world’s awareness of the worst European refugee crisis since World War II. He is asking the world to respond to a huge humanitarian crisis. You might be able to get the headlines from the television, but it takes a lot more information to understand the meaning of the top stories.
So I continue to read. I read articles. I read books. I try to delve deeply into complex ideas. And I continue to be suspicious of other media to provide the depth of understanding that is required in a complex world.
You must have a similar approach. After all, you have just read this very wordy blog post.