Main ideas: There's a difference between gathering data and wrestling with ideas and achieving understanding/wisdom.
"Wrestling with truth, as the story of Jacob warns us, is a time-consuming process that marks us forever."
You can be informed just by skimming the newspaper. To be enlightened, you must read broadly and deeply -- history, political theory, philosophy, etc -- and make connections between what you've read.
Here she writes a lot about the mechanics of reading, and how to train yourself to improve your vocabulary, your comprehension, your basic reading skills (like not letting your eyes jump all over the page -- which I notice I do if I've been spending too much time on facebook or similar manic websites).
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
WEM, Chapter 1
(I did a lot of reading at my parents', this week, and journaled in a notebook there -- since it feels important to me to keep my notes in one place, I'll be putting those entries here, post-dated)
Main ideas: The brain needs to be trained to study, to be part of the great conversations, just like you'd need to train to run a marathon. First grasp basic info, then evaluate, then form and express your own opinions.
She spends a lot of time talking about the differences between reading for fun, for data-gathering, and for reflection and being part of the "Great Conversation". Of course, my plan this year is a lot of data-gathering (although including some more philosophical and analytical reading, too), in preparation for deeper reading later on, so some of her dismissal of data-gathering rubs me the wrong way. But I do agree that it's not sufficient in itself, it should be prep for deeper analysis and for forming your own opinions. I'm just starting with an extremely broad Grammar stage, apparently.
She feels strongly about her rules, it seems to me:
* no more than half an hour of reading at a time, at first
* morning is better than evening
* don't do your reading time immediately after checking email
* stick to one book/subject at a time
* read in chronological order (she's aiming her advice at folks who are planning to make a study of the novel, or the autobiography, or the history, or poetry, which is not my plan, this year -- if you're sticking to one area, though, she makes a good point)
* follow the three stages -- grammar (understand the basics), then logic (analyze the author's positions), then rhetoric (form and express your own opinions). Maybe she'll ease up on it, later in the book, but right now she seems a little too picky about keeping all the stages separate. (obviously, I'm not following the rules -- my journaling is falling into a combination of narration (just summarizing from memory what the chapter's main ideas were), analyzing the strength of the author's arguments, and jotting down my own thoughts on the subject.
I'm planning to try most of her suggestions because they appeal to me, and I think they'll work with my strengths and balance out my weaknesses (such as the tendency to flit all over the place, reading bits and pieces of 6 different books and never finishing any of them). But her insistence on the virtues of her scheme... I don't buy it. She gives persuasive arguments for a few aspects of her plan, but mostly she fills the first several chapters with quotes from famous people who used this sort of a system, and with references to "classical education" (without, as far as I can recall, defining what that is, or explaining why it's superior to other schemes, other than the fact that it's what was used in some former Golden Age of Thoughtful People). There's an automatic respect for tradition, which isn't an attitude I share.
Reminds me of Charlotte Mason (habit building, narration), except CM has you studying even smaller bits of more subjects at once. Which approach is better? Where's your research-based proof?
Main ideas: The brain needs to be trained to study, to be part of the great conversations, just like you'd need to train to run a marathon. First grasp basic info, then evaluate, then form and express your own opinions.
She spends a lot of time talking about the differences between reading for fun, for data-gathering, and for reflection and being part of the "Great Conversation". Of course, my plan this year is a lot of data-gathering (although including some more philosophical and analytical reading, too), in preparation for deeper reading later on, so some of her dismissal of data-gathering rubs me the wrong way. But I do agree that it's not sufficient in itself, it should be prep for deeper analysis and for forming your own opinions. I'm just starting with an extremely broad Grammar stage, apparently.
She feels strongly about her rules, it seems to me:
* no more than half an hour of reading at a time, at first
* morning is better than evening
* don't do your reading time immediately after checking email
* stick to one book/subject at a time
* read in chronological order (she's aiming her advice at folks who are planning to make a study of the novel, or the autobiography, or the history, or poetry, which is not my plan, this year -- if you're sticking to one area, though, she makes a good point)
* follow the three stages -- grammar (understand the basics), then logic (analyze the author's positions), then rhetoric (form and express your own opinions). Maybe she'll ease up on it, later in the book, but right now she seems a little too picky about keeping all the stages separate. (obviously, I'm not following the rules -- my journaling is falling into a combination of narration (just summarizing from memory what the chapter's main ideas were), analyzing the strength of the author's arguments, and jotting down my own thoughts on the subject.
I'm planning to try most of her suggestions because they appeal to me, and I think they'll work with my strengths and balance out my weaknesses (such as the tendency to flit all over the place, reading bits and pieces of 6 different books and never finishing any of them). But her insistence on the virtues of her scheme... I don't buy it. She gives persuasive arguments for a few aspects of her plan, but mostly she fills the first several chapters with quotes from famous people who used this sort of a system, and with references to "classical education" (without, as far as I can recall, defining what that is, or explaining why it's superior to other schemes, other than the fact that it's what was used in some former Golden Age of Thoughtful People). There's an automatic respect for tradition, which isn't an attitude I share.
Reminds me of Charlotte Mason (habit building, narration), except CM has you studying even smaller bits of more subjects at once. Which approach is better? Where's your research-based proof?
Monday, February 6, 2012
The Well-Educated Mind
After trying a few different approaches to the daily reading habit and finding that none of them quite fit my life or reading style, a conversation with a friend led me to Susan Wise Bauer's _The Well-Educated Mind_. I knew her books aimed at parents educating their kids, but this one's aimed at adults focused on their own self-education.
Her approach is not far different from Charlotte Mason's, with the exception of focusing on reading one book at time (something totally alien to my own usual approach, but a habit I'm willing to build, if it will help me cut down on the temptation to flit from subject to subject, never quite finishing up a single one).
Bauer models her recommendations on the trivium -- in each area of study, first you gather the basic information, then you evaluate and analyze, then you form and express your own opinions on the subject. (the three stages: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric)
She recommends starting off by reading for half an hour, 4 days a week, and keeping a journal, like a Commonplace book, in which you jot down quotes or ideas that stand out, write down a few sentences that summarize the day's reading, and note any questions or arguments that come to mind. That's what I'm going to be doing here (although the while-reading notes will go in a notebook - those are likely to be mostly lists of books or authors or words to look up).
Her emphasis is on the Great Books, so she's assuming her readers are going to go on to focus on novels, autobiographies, or histories. That's not my plan, at least not this year, but I think her approach will work just as well for the broad reading I'm planning to do.
I welcome anyone interested in discussing whatever book I'm currently working on reading (I'm happy to discuss past ones, too, as I start building up more of a collection of entries, here).
Her approach is not far different from Charlotte Mason's, with the exception of focusing on reading one book at time (something totally alien to my own usual approach, but a habit I'm willing to build, if it will help me cut down on the temptation to flit from subject to subject, never quite finishing up a single one).
Bauer models her recommendations on the trivium -- in each area of study, first you gather the basic information, then you evaluate and analyze, then you form and express your own opinions on the subject. (the three stages: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric)
She recommends starting off by reading for half an hour, 4 days a week, and keeping a journal, like a Commonplace book, in which you jot down quotes or ideas that stand out, write down a few sentences that summarize the day's reading, and note any questions or arguments that come to mind. That's what I'm going to be doing here (although the while-reading notes will go in a notebook - those are likely to be mostly lists of books or authors or words to look up).
Her emphasis is on the Great Books, so she's assuming her readers are going to go on to focus on novels, autobiographies, or histories. That's not my plan, at least not this year, but I think her approach will work just as well for the broad reading I'm planning to do.
I welcome anyone interested in discussing whatever book I'm currently working on reading (I'm happy to discuss past ones, too, as I start building up more of a collection of entries, here).
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