Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Is reading necessary?
As technology advances, our daily routines become altered by new and more convenient ways to obtain information. Our brains begin to adjust and adapt, and we begin to expect information in these faster ways. Nicholas Carr often mentions his inability to focus while reading several paragraphs of writing. Now that the summer homework due dates are coming around the corner, those who have been procrastinating the past few months have big reading assignments to accomplish in just a few weeks. As one of these procrastinators, I am beginning to relate to Carr's struggles for focus.
I am a proficient reader. I find reading through novels to be a good pastime and I find it easy to get lost in a book for hours. However, for this to happen, I need to find the novel stimulating and interesting. While reading for history, I am struggling to get lost in the text and to read continuously. As my struggle for focus continued, it came across to me that I can no longer read for long periods of time unless I am being entertained. New technology has made it easy for me to find quick facts because of the infinite amount of knowledge that the internet contains. If we had learning materials such as videos instead of books to help stimulate our interest in the subjects being taught to us, would students learn more? If the facts that we needed to learn were presented to us more straightforward and abruptly, like quick facts and articles on the internet, would we be doing our education a disservice? Is reading an important way to learn, or would students be better off without it?
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I don't think that students will learn more if we just got videos to learn from. A video only has a certain amount of information. When you read, you can get all the information you need, and you can go over it many times. Reading is a very important way to learn! You start learning how to read when you are very young because you need reading for everything. You don't just need reading in school. You need to know how to read if you want to travel, apply for jobs, and many other reasons. To me when you read, you get a clearer image in your head because you get to picture the events going on in your own way. To me its true what they say, reading stimulates your imagination. In my opinion you need books to obtain all the information that you need to learn.
ReplyDeleteIf we had videos as our source of interest and learning, I do not believe that overall the students would learn more. Students are attracted to the box that everyone finds their entertainment on. With the mention of watching a video in class, most kids immediately take an interest even if it is an educational video. However, most students end up zoning out and even falling asleep so videos intended to help students learn just turn out to be a waste of time. Books on the other hand are an excellent source of learning and reinforcing what the teacher already taught. Students are allowed to read and work out of them at their own pace and understanding. If facts were introduced to us like on the internet, I do believe that we would be doing education a disservice. Short, summarized facts do not provide the understanding that reading an entire passage or book has on the reader. With the entire piece of information in front of you, it provides full explanation and background to what you need to know and will be more prone to stay in your memory. I think reading is not only an important way to learn, but a good pastime just like you say. Books elaborate on a subject and helps in knowing content so its better to have books than not to have them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lauren's statement about how books' appeal topics, if appealing and interesting, can cause their readers to be loss in within the books for hours upon hours. The concept of information being presented in a straight-forward and easy to understand manner through articles and quick facts through the internet seems helpful and would make learning and comprehension of a variety of subjects more appealing and easier because it would save individuals the worry of thinking and developing insights to understand certain struggles, while making research and the effort spent to retrieve certain information less strenuous and would take less time. However, although the quick and easy access to information through articles and quick facts would be very convenient and helpful, I believe it would not benefit people's intellect and would cause a depletion in their intellectual, dialectical, and interactive involvement stimulated like Postman argues in Amusing Ourselves to Death when they read books and are forced to develop their own insight and conclusions rather than being handed quick and straight-forward information. When individuals are handed information in a quick, straight-forward manner, it causes them to become accustomed to being handed information without having to develop their own conclusions when reading certain pieces of information, thus making individuals lazy and and not accustomed to working for answers or information. Information presented in quick and abrupt manners, dilutes the quality of information because it only allows its readers main points of certain topics, which will likely be forget later on because the need for access to quick and abrupt information tends to be in moments of procrastination for school work, thus showing the quick access of information usually harms individuals instead of helping them. I believe reading is more beneficial than being handed information becomes like Postman mentions in Amusing Ourselves to Death, reading allows individuals to intellectually, interactively, and dialectically involve themselves as opposed to being handed information or receiving information from the television, which causes only passive involvement. Reading also allows individuals to develop individual conclusions, thus allowing them to support their arguments about specific topics based on their own interpretations from the topic. Reading, like Lauren and Kinsey mentioned, serves a beneficial past time, that not only allows individuals to relax and enjoy interesting books, but books also allow their readers to increase their range of vocabulary, thus increasing the readers' knowledge and comprehension of vocabulary and various topics.
ReplyDeleteAnswering your question on whether reading is an important way to learn. I have to say that it is. Although many people might think the opposite, but directly reading a novel or a story either fiction or non-fiction adds dramatically to ones imagination, widening its boundaries and therefore allowing for much better and more creative writing. The more one reads the better his writing becomes. However, books are not always the better side of learning for example a student might learn more from a video or a practical experiment than reading straightforward from a book. Also some books that tend to be boring confuses the person more and in such cases reading a straightforward fact from the internet would be much beneficial for that person. Therefore reading could be both a benefit or a confusion depending on whether the person is entertained and is enjoying the reading or not.
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