image courtesy, Simon & Schuster
Paraphrased and excerpted as usual …
Thinking is vitally important, but the modern world does not let us …
One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance).
The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, (the “consumer” of modern internet streams —mjb) is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for one to “make up one’s own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort.
But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up their own mind at all. Instead, they inserts a packaged opinion into their mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. They then push a button and “play back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. They have performed acceptably without having had to think.
On the ability to read actively & the need to make an effort to match the author’s
Since reading of any sort is an activity, all reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is impossible; we cannot read with our eyes immobilized and our minds asleep. Hence when we contrast active with passive reading, our purpose is, first, to call attention to the fact that reading can be more or less active, and second, to point out that the more active the reading the better.
Reading and listening are commonly thought of as receiving communication from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. The mistake here is to suppose that receiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court.
On the contrary, the reader or listener is much more like the catcher in a game of baseball.
Catching the ball is just as much an activity as pitching or hitting it. The pitcher or batter is the sender in the sense that his activity initiates the motion of the ball. The catcher or fielder is the receiver in the sense that his activity terminates it. Both are active, though the activities are different.
If anything is passive, it is the ball. It is the inert thing that is put in motion or stopped, whereas the players are active, moving to pitch, hit, or catch. The analogy with writing and reading is almost perfect. The thing that is written and read, like the ball, is the passive object common to the two activities that begin and terminate the process.
We can take this analogy a step further. The art of catching is the skill of catching every kind of pitch—fast balls and curves, changeups and knucklers.
Similarly, the art of reading is the skill of catching every sort of communication as well as possible.
It is noteworthy that the pitcher and catcher are successful only to the extent that they cooperate. The relation of writer and reader is similar. Successful communication occurs in any case where what the writer wanted to have received finds its way into the reader’s possession. The writer’s skill and the reader’s skill converge upon a common end.
There is one respect in which the analogy breaks down. The ball is a simple unit. It is either completely caught or not.
A piece of writing, however, is a complex object. It can be received more or less completely, all the way from very little of what the writer intended to the whole of it. The amount the reader “catches” will usually depend on the amount of activity he puts into the process, as well as upon the skill with which he executes the different mental acts involved.
What does active reading entail?
Given the same thing to read, one person reads it better than another, first, by reading it more actively, and second, by performing each of the acts involved more skillfully. These two things are related.
Reading is a complex activity, just as writing is.
It consists of a large number of separate acts, all of which must be performed in a good reading. The person who can perform more of them is better able to read.
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