READING MATTERS

R.M.Shurmer@2021 Though my prime directive this year is to establish a familiarity with some significant developments in history, my greater goal is to help you graduate with a desire to cultivate what Jacques Barzun calls an ‘educated mind’. Despite what the tech gurus of Palo-Alto might wish for, the educated person engages in certain activities that prioritize the Word: conversing, writing, and READING. Becoming ‘well-read’ is the single most important aspect of your intellectual development and it’s a shame (and a sham) that this is not said more often. Reading, quite simply, expands your universe and increases your mental/intellectual/emotional acuity. Reading gives you access to thoughts and experiences you would otherwise never encounter in your own life. Since ancient Mesopotamia, learning to read has been an identifiable skill that accompanied most technological and cultural advancement. The decline in serious reading in this country since World War II has contributed to a decline in overall verbal ability (and, I would argue, the ability to think clearly and systematically) and consequently affected people’s ability to engage in protracted analytical argument. Analysis of the SAT, adjusting for the scoring changes made to cover up the appalling drop in real scores, shows that the mean verbal ability of college-bound students today has dropped a full 70pts since 1962 (the year television reached 90% of American households!).

Serious learning takes discipline and commitment. Shortcuts may get you through a semester course in high school (and increasingly in university), but they do little to help you become ‘educated’ and will catch up with you at some point.

Unfortunately, unlike your work in athletics, the adrenaline rush or payoff may not be felt until years later. It is clear when you go 12-0 in a football season that you played well and dominated your opposition. Not so when it comes to being truly educated. When it comes to serious education, quick answers and fast action are no substitutes for deep thought and reflection. This is why Cliff Stoll, astronomer and early internet guru, today eschews computer-based learning and instead advocates reading books and discussing tough topics face-to-face. “Scholarship isn’t about browsing the Internet, writes Stoll in his book High-Tech Heretic,  it’s about understanding events, appreciating history, and interpreting our world.”

The journalist/essayist/critic Adam Gopnik, arguing that journalists have a professional responsibility to be serious readers,  writes that “books contain essentially all the information in the world on every imaginable subject. They’re the world’s most efficient technology.” He continues: “I’ve discovered that reading is actually one of those skills that increases exponentially the more of it you do, and it doesn’t stop improving the older you get, which is an encouraging fact.” Following the news can give you ideas, but you’ve got to go to books to get the depth.

You have reached a level of intellectual competence where it is assumed that you read reasonably effectively — in fact your skill level probably already exceeds at least 90% of the American population — but our aim is for mastery, something for which I still work daily to achieve. It may surprise you to learn that under 20% of all Americans can read above a 10th grade level (before WWII that number was 54%) and only about 1/2 of adult Americans can read beyond a 6th-grade level!  Think about that. More Americans could read at a 10th-grade level in 1949 than can read at a 6th grade level today. And this is despite the fact that in 1949, the average American only had 8.5 years of formal education, whereas today that number is 12.5 years. [* Sources: Jonathon Kozol, Illiterate America; Learning Disabilities Association; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; U.S. Department of Education]

Something has gone horribly wrong! Again, Barzun on the subject: What is required for mastery is a lively and insatiable interest. This is the thing that cannot be faked. And this is also what makes it impossible to ‘climb’ into an educated society under false pretenses as people do into snobbish, moneyed, or artistic circles. The brotherhood of educated men (and women) is the one social group which our century cannot open to all by legislative fiat. The irony is that those within have no desire to keep it exclusive — the more the merrier, provided they are the genuine article. It is no secret that the key element to education — and I mean ‘education’ not learning, they are different — is reading for enlightenment rather than reading for information alone. In the environment of an advanced history course, you are expected to do both, but you will need to step up your reading skills overall to achieve mastery. So a few suggestions are in order.

Firstly, you get better at reading by reading! And reading challenging works rather than the latest installment of Harry Potter. None of you would expect a person at the age of 25 to pick up a tennis racquet for the first time and win the US Open or sit down at a piano for the first time and win the Van Cliburn competition. Why should it be any different with regard to reading? Those who read (and write and think) well, read lots! And they read challenging literature. Challenging literature makes your head hurt! It forces you to learn new words and reread sections.  Ability and comprehension increases when you read books that are ABOVE your level. The books that you ‘enjoy’ are not necessarily the ones that are best for you.

Secondly, ‘multitasking’ is a myth. Develop the sound habit NOW of banishing cell phones and computers from your work-space when you read serious literature. If you care about thinking seriously, YOU MUST get away from your phones and computers!
It is now proven that intellectual work production degrades for every new mental task added to the thinking environment. Our society makes it easy to live in a state of permanent distraction – and most people who live attached to a cell phone do — it is designed to create addiction! You simply MUST wean yourself away from the cell phone and computer screen if you wish to read with any degree of focus necessary to engage with great literature. Here is what Daniel Levitin, distinguished professor of Behavioral Neuroscience, has to say on the topic: “[There is a] metabolic costs [for] multitasking, such as reading e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time, or social networking while reading a book. It takes more energy to shift your attention from task to task. It takes less energy to focus. That means that people who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they’ll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it. Daydreaming also takes less energy than multitasking. And the natural intuitive see-saw between focusing and daydreaming helps to recalibrate and restore the brain. Multitasking does not. Perhaps most important, multitasking by definition disrupts the kind of sustained thought usually necessary for problem solving and for creativity.” (The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, pp. 169-171.) The idea that you can read or write effectively while carrying on with social media, watching videos, or even listening to music is unsound and wrong-headed.

Serious thought, and by extension analytical reading and writing, demand that you turn off your phone and laptop and music device. (I know that may sound rather funny and hypocritical of me if you are reading this on your computer or phone, but your serious readings will generally not be online.) This approach will not only benefit your concentration, understanding, and retention (i.e serious education), but will also make you a more efficient reader.

Cultivate an environment that is conducive to serious intellectual work.     While this is really just a subset of the point I made above, its importance demands explication. Find a relatively secluded and quite space to do your reading. (There’s a reason libraries used to be quiet spaces — I say used to because most libraries now have been polluted by electronic devices, computers, videos, cell phones, etc, that fundamentally disrupt scholarly activity. The books are fast disappearing, too!) Use a desk and a good light. DO NOT read in your bed – or even in your bedroom if you can manage that! Your body reacts to its environment; laying in a bed tells it that it is time to sleep – and that is exactly what most people who try to read in bed end up doing. [This is why most people read less serious books in bed. It doesn’t really matter much if you fall asleep reading ‘What Ho, Jeeves!’]

Reading documents and serious literature is different from reading a textbook.     You should read documents, especially those such as ‘The Prince’ that have achieved special status in the Western canon, differently from the way you approach other works. Active reading MUST be cultivated. That means stay awake, ask questions, and write while reading  – on the text and in a reading journal optimally. Here are a few questions that serious readers always consider as they work through texts:

• What is the writing about? Can you summarize it in your own words (if yes, WRITE that summary in your notes or in the margins)?
• What problem/issue is the author addressing or trying to solve?
• What are the author’s propositions (theses)?
• What of it? Are they true?
• Should the author be believed?
• How does the text relate to the period in which it was written?
• How does the text relate to others writings on the same topic?
• How does the text challenge your own notions of the topic?
• What questions come to mind as I read this document?

To paraphrase Mortimer Adler, one of the founders of the Great Books Program, great ideas seek truth and must be discussed seriously. They demand more than idle chit-chat. Reading for enlightenment demands your full attention and engagement. Good readers carry on a dialogue with their books and will have a collection of written notes (reactions, ideas, and questions) afterward. This is why I encourage you all to begin reading journals of your own, something that is separate, and entirely different, from informational class notes. Effective reading requires work and skill. Spark Notes or a Wiki article WILL NOT lead to an enlightened understanding of a text. Note: Gay&Webb, while a survey narrative, is not written as most modern textbooks. It, too, demands serious focus.

“The only books worth reading this way are the books over your head. The Great Books are the books that are worth everybody’s reading because they are over everybody’s head all the time.”   
–M. Adler