The one thing I did not expect to hear Dr. Hendricks say in Bible Study Methods and Hermeneutics class was, "You people don't know how to read!"
He was serious, too.
He went on to tell us that year after year, the reading ability in the seminary has dropped. Of course, there are numerous reasons, he told us. His personal opinion is that television is the number one culprit.
After a number of amusing anecdotes about reading (and some amazing stories of people who could really read), he recommended two books to us: How to Read a Book and 10 Days to Faster Reading.
I bought 10 Days (because the DTS bookstore was out of How to Read). I'll let y'all (see, I'm a Texan already!) know how it goes and if it really helps or not.
Oh, and I signed up for a speed reading class that Prof enthusiastically recommended.
Maybe I'll post copies of the notes or something. :)
9 comments:
I'd be interested to know what that does for you. Keep us posted.
Me too. M. Adler's book has been on my "to read" list for a while - I should bump it up. A question I often ask myself now is, "How can I as a parent train my son (when he's older) to be a reader, especially in a society so disinterested?" It certainly helps to be married to an English teacher :)
I enjoyed this article back in my Ravi-centric days: http://www.rzim.org/resources/jttran.php?seqid=63
Prof made a few comments in class yesterday about this exact issue of training your kids to love to read.
He said that if you brought in each of his kids independently of each other, without prompting they would all say that "How to Read a Book" was the most influential book in their lives (aside from the Bible, of course).
He also said that if you are really serious about raising kids who love reading and are proficient at it, you'll seriously rethink television.
He didn't come right out and say "get rid of your TV," but he meant it.
ravi-centric... lol :)
My brother is a huge reader (about 3 times as fast as I am) but he seldom reads anything of substance (at least not yet). I think that one has to enjoy thought before he can enjoy reading books of substance.
...My parents apparently had a little trouble in this area of child rearing...
Adler's book is really good. I really enjoyed considering that there are different ways to read: you can't read a play the same as a novel the same as a newspaper the same as a poem. That may seem pretty obvious, but I hadn't thought it through very much before.
I bought a photo-reading thing when I was in highschool. Allegedly, you should get to the point where you can look at a page, no word in particular, and have it burned into your photographic memory, and you're able to recall it later.
Hah. Never got there. I got to the point where I could take in about three lines at a time and have them make sense. It worked well for fiction. It was cool to get past thinking about all the words, and just have the images scrolling in my mind. I should try it again sometime.
That photo-reading thing is pretty cool.
I'd like to get to the point where I can scroll my eyes down the middle of an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper and get it all.
It's possible, they say, but I bet it takes a lifetime.
I actually tried Kevin Trudeau's Mega Speed Reading Course about 10 years ago. I am not sure that one can excel to the point that Mr. Trudeau claims to have reached by just taking his course. However, I would say that it did help me to look at an aspect of reading a little differently. In otherwords, not everything has to be completely word for word analyzed in all types of material. I did find the following link interesting in reviewing speed reading software:
http://www.4boxreviews.com/speed-reader-review.html
It's been said, "Readers are leaders and Leaders are REaders". I think that is by John Maxwell.
My photoreading program had some goofy new age, channel the spirits type stuff in it. It made one think one was a student in massage therapy school.
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