Colleagues,

I read books (thanks to the Boston Public Library!), articles,  
newspapers, web pages, (wanted and unwanted) mail and email and  
discussion list postings like this, manuals, curricula, content  
standards, policies, Requests for Proposals, proposals, evaluations,  
studies, and much more.

I am a critical reader. One of the documents that helped me to "get"  
why it is important to be a critical reader many years ago is "Body  
Ritual Among the Nacirema" https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html   
Wendy, and others, this might be useful with some of your adult  
secondary education/transition to college students. If you haven't  
read it yet, it's a must!

The past couple of years, my book group has chosen to read books that  
are essentially long (usually interesting) arguments. These include:

Two books by Yale Law School Professor, Amy Chua, World on Fire, and  
Day of Empire, How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They  
Fall; and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

I found each of these three books compelling. Each started with a  
thesis and tried to prove it using arguments and a variety of kinds  
of evidence. This kind of reading requires being able to follow a  
well-developed argument and having a dialogue with yourself (and  
ideally others) about the argument and its sub-parts. In the end, you  
have to decide whether or not, and to what extent, to accept the  
thesis. This is the kind of reading (thinking) we need in a  
pluralistic, democratic society. We need other kinds of reading, too,  
but the ability to follow (and dispute) an argument is especially  
important.

David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net



On Jul 30, 2008, at 4:28 PM, Wendy Quinones wrote:


> Hi everyone and Gina especially,

> I for one cannot imagine a life without reading books for  

> pleasure.  At any one time, I geneally have 3 or 4 books going at a  

> time, plus at least one book I'm listening to.  I HATE reading on  

> the screen, although I have to do a lot of it.  That's when I have  

> trouble concentrating in a linear manner for any length of time,  

> unless I'm reading what I am writing at the time.

>

> I went to the "Tree Octopus" site, and I have to say that most of  

> the students I've had in the last few years would have fallen for  

> it totally.  It just doesn't seem to matter how many times we tell  

> them to apply reason to the internet -- especially if it looks as  

> professional as that one did, they're going to buy it.  I did an  

> exercise once with a "medical" site that promised a journal of a  

> man's pregnancy along with other absurd things, and although  we'd  

> had a lengthy discussion of how to judge a website's truthfulness  

> (and this spoof site had red flags galore), none of the students  

> who got that as their assignment spotted  it as a fake.  We have  

> our work cut out for us, friends!

>

> Wendy Quinones

> ----------------------------------------------------

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