Reading
07/04/14 05:29
I wasn’t the best student in high school. I had plenty of intelligence, but I wasn’t motivated to apply myself to the content of my classes. There were a few classes where I learned some lifelong skills. I have often commented that the two most important classes for me in high school were typing and Latin - both of which I use every day. When I got to college I had to focus and learn new study skills. One of the skills I had to master quickly was that of reading for content. I did a lot of outlining the books I was reading in order to teach my mind to organize the information that I was gaining. Slowly I learned to organize the information without having to keep such copious notes. One of the things that I did when I got to college was to stop reading in bed. I had read myself to sleep for years at that point and it was obvious that I was making an association between reading and sleeping, an association that didn’t work for college reading. I had a job opening the campus library at 6 a.m. each morning. Most mornings there were very few people using the library during the early hours, so I could do a bit of reading myself. Throughout the day, between classes, I would sit at my desk and read.
By the time I got to Seminary, my reading skills had improved. I learned to work through the table of contents and the endnotes of a book to see how the author organized ideas before actually reading the book. Once I understood the structure of the book, it was easier to retain the information presented. About half way through my graduate education I found time to read novels again and I became aware of two different styles of reading. My recreational reading was less systematic. I would read for the story line and the emotional content without as much emphasis on the ability to recall specific content when I was reading for fun. My more serious reading relating to the learning and research I was doing required a more focused approach. I was still taking plenty of notes, but there definitely were two distinct modes of reading.
These days I can read with both of those mindsets, but I have added at leas a third way of reading. The newest form of reading is done online. We still receive a daily newspaper, but most of my news reading is done online these days. When I am reading online, I look at a lot of content that I don’t actually read. I skim the headlines looking for stories that interest me and then click on a few stories. I will occasionally read an online news story carefully, but much of my online reading consists of scanning and skimming. Often I will be unable to recall any particulars of something that I have read online. Most frustrating to me about this style of reading is that I cannot distinguish the source of an idea or thought. It is generally something that I read online, but I didn’t read carefully enough to go back and review what I have read. A quick browser search will often yield a similar article that will give me the content that I need.
I use the Internet for research as well. Many scholarly and journal articles are best accessed online. From time to time when I find a serious bit of research I will print it out to read more in depth. I think I am capable of careful reading with my computer, but I know that for the most part I don’t read very carefully online.
So far I have resisted a digital book reader or tablet computer. I have the software to read books and articles on my phone and my notebook computer and it seems to me that an additional device isn’t needed at the present. What I suspect is that such a device might add a fourth way of reading, somewhere between the scanning and skimming of online reading and the focused reading of a book.
Because of my college and graduate school experiences, I am convinced that we are capable of training our brains. Through practice and discipline I learned to read in-depth and to organize the content of what I was reading for recall and application.
I worry a bit that we aren’t focusing on that kind of discipline in contemporary education. With continual access to the Internet, today’s university students have the ability to access far more content than we could find in conventional libraries or access through interlibrary loan. The incredible increase in the amount of content available to students is impressive and exciting. But I wonder how many students are really reading in this scan and skim environment.
It is wonderful to have access to huge amounts of data. I remember my physical and emotional reaction to the massive Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. At the time, in those pre-Internet days, it seemed as if I could find any book I would ever need. The library boasted five floors of stacks, over 4.5 million bound volumes, thousands and thousands of journals and periodicals, reference collections, and special collections and rare books. The library was then, and I believe still is, weighted towards the humanities and social sciences.In those days the divinity collections were in a separate building - another incredible collection of books. It has always been a fascination that the location of the first sustained nuclear reaction is now the site of one of the world’s great collections of humanities literature.
I never came close to even discovering all of the resources that were in that library. But what I did do in those years was to allow a few great writers and a few great thinkers to get under my skin. I read every book that Elie Wiesel had published to date during those years. I read Bonhoeffer and Barth and Tillich carefully and allowed their ideas and thoughts to penetrate deeply. I believe that my identity was shaped by those great thinkers and their ideas. There were many other writers whose ideas shaped my own. That doesn’t happen if all you do is scan and skim.
I’m grateful that today’s students have access to the Internet and to devices that allow them to access huge volumes of information. But I also hope that they will discover a few great thinkers whose ideas are worth getting to know in depth. They may even discover that there are a few books worth owning and reading more than once.
By the time I got to Seminary, my reading skills had improved. I learned to work through the table of contents and the endnotes of a book to see how the author organized ideas before actually reading the book. Once I understood the structure of the book, it was easier to retain the information presented. About half way through my graduate education I found time to read novels again and I became aware of two different styles of reading. My recreational reading was less systematic. I would read for the story line and the emotional content without as much emphasis on the ability to recall specific content when I was reading for fun. My more serious reading relating to the learning and research I was doing required a more focused approach. I was still taking plenty of notes, but there definitely were two distinct modes of reading.
These days I can read with both of those mindsets, but I have added at leas a third way of reading. The newest form of reading is done online. We still receive a daily newspaper, but most of my news reading is done online these days. When I am reading online, I look at a lot of content that I don’t actually read. I skim the headlines looking for stories that interest me and then click on a few stories. I will occasionally read an online news story carefully, but much of my online reading consists of scanning and skimming. Often I will be unable to recall any particulars of something that I have read online. Most frustrating to me about this style of reading is that I cannot distinguish the source of an idea or thought. It is generally something that I read online, but I didn’t read carefully enough to go back and review what I have read. A quick browser search will often yield a similar article that will give me the content that I need.
I use the Internet for research as well. Many scholarly and journal articles are best accessed online. From time to time when I find a serious bit of research I will print it out to read more in depth. I think I am capable of careful reading with my computer, but I know that for the most part I don’t read very carefully online.
So far I have resisted a digital book reader or tablet computer. I have the software to read books and articles on my phone and my notebook computer and it seems to me that an additional device isn’t needed at the present. What I suspect is that such a device might add a fourth way of reading, somewhere between the scanning and skimming of online reading and the focused reading of a book.
Because of my college and graduate school experiences, I am convinced that we are capable of training our brains. Through practice and discipline I learned to read in-depth and to organize the content of what I was reading for recall and application.
I worry a bit that we aren’t focusing on that kind of discipline in contemporary education. With continual access to the Internet, today’s university students have the ability to access far more content than we could find in conventional libraries or access through interlibrary loan. The incredible increase in the amount of content available to students is impressive and exciting. But I wonder how many students are really reading in this scan and skim environment.
It is wonderful to have access to huge amounts of data. I remember my physical and emotional reaction to the massive Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. At the time, in those pre-Internet days, it seemed as if I could find any book I would ever need. The library boasted five floors of stacks, over 4.5 million bound volumes, thousands and thousands of journals and periodicals, reference collections, and special collections and rare books. The library was then, and I believe still is, weighted towards the humanities and social sciences.In those days the divinity collections were in a separate building - another incredible collection of books. It has always been a fascination that the location of the first sustained nuclear reaction is now the site of one of the world’s great collections of humanities literature.
I never came close to even discovering all of the resources that were in that library. But what I did do in those years was to allow a few great writers and a few great thinkers to get under my skin. I read every book that Elie Wiesel had published to date during those years. I read Bonhoeffer and Barth and Tillich carefully and allowed their ideas and thoughts to penetrate deeply. I believe that my identity was shaped by those great thinkers and their ideas. There were many other writers whose ideas shaped my own. That doesn’t happen if all you do is scan and skim.
I’m grateful that today’s students have access to the Internet and to devices that allow them to access huge volumes of information. But I also hope that they will discover a few great thinkers whose ideas are worth getting to know in depth. They may even discover that there are a few books worth owning and reading more than once.