Importance of Reading

A while back I wrote about the importance of reading and focused on its importance in a healthy democracy. Below is the full essay, Art of Reading which appeared in the Sunday New Straits Times Learning Curve Section, September 26, 2010, p.4:

Art of Reading

'The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.' - Alan Bloom[1]

'ONE of the issues that has concerned me as a teacher has been the difficulty of getting my students to read. As always in my class I point out to the assembled students the importance of reading to pass their course. After all, if you do not read how do you expect to write the essay I often put as their assessment? Reflecting upon this mantra that I dutifully wheel out every semester, I find myself wondering if the apparent decline in reading signifies something deeper in our society. Is this a problem that suggests deeper issues?

We live in a busy world of television, computers and mobile phones. Our world is busy, profit oriented and commercialised. Who can take time to read and enjoy a book or even newspaper when there are so many demands on our time and attention? Who has the time to read when there is so much to do? Why is reading so important? One of the arguments for reading lies in the way it enables us to meet information. The act of reading involves the practice of contemplation, which means that we are not simply acquiring information per se when we read. Rather we are engaging in the act of understanding through the process of reflection.

In fact the very speed and volume of information that assails us from every direction these days speaks to the need for us to practise and cultivate the art of reading more rather than less so in our lives. The buzz of modern life and the demands of immediacy, of being constantly relevant and up to date with things mean that rarely do we get the time to reflect critique and comprehend properly the information that comes at us from all quarters. Yet it is the very speed, volume and relentlessness of information and our inability to properly process and grasp its import that makes the act of reading so crucial. The irony is that if we are to engage, and grasp the complexity and demands made upon us by the world we live in, the more we need to maintain and nurture our capacities for interior reflection and consideration.

The capacity to discern, imagine and reflect upon things requires time and effort. Reading and the demand that it makes upon us to take time and reflect and ponder is an important practice that many of us are losing despite its importance in enabling us to exercise our capacities for reflection, judgement and discernment. While reading is a prerequisite to gaining entrance into university, the importance of reading is of far greater significance than that. Reading by virtue of the habits and dispositions it instils in us is also a precondition for democratic self-governance. Reading is a fundamental act that helps generate and develop a sense of engagement in public issues. We read, we have to reflect, we have to take time and consider another's point of view.

To what extent are people taking time to read reflect, discern and judge? Or are we increasingly responding immediately to and emotionally manipulated by a commercialised and sensationalised media, and driven by the immediacy of the Internet? Is our public debate less influenced by processes of judgement and discernment, and more characterised by a desire to simply respond immediately without thought or consideration? Is the commercialisation of information, the trivialisation and reduction of issues to sound bites and emotive triggers creating a situation where our capacities for judgement and reflection are curtailed and our responses manipulated? This issue goes to the heart of the relationship between reading and the creation of a democratic public engaged in the difficult task of discussing, debating and sometimes disagreeing on issues that concern us all. Are we spending time to consider, and understand others' points of views or are we responding immediately to a maelstrom of stimulation and emotively charged information and provocation? Do we have the time to read carefully and reflect?

If as I suspect in my darker, more pessimistic moments, our engagement with issues and opinions fails to be based on the discipline that taking time to read imposes on us then the way we consume information is increasingly unreflective, and driven by immediacy. In such a situation our responses to each other's statements in public forums will also be characterised by this lack of reflection. We respond to each other not by thinking deeply and reflectively but rather by seeking to make immediate impact rather than reach understanding. So the question arises.

Are the ways that people currently take in information in blogs, chatting, sms, texting and the quick intake of ideas through web surfing and the incessant stimulation that comes from the media that surrounds and envelops us conducive to the development to reflection, discernment and refining judgement? Is the type of information browsing that we now do in our busy lives, the snap shot of bits and pieces picked up in web browsing, the quick and instant messaging that many of us consume online or on our mobile phones, or the fast commercialised way news is now packaged in our contemporary media conducive to developing the habits of reflective contemplation and judgement and nuanced understanding? Or is the way we consume information, the time constraints and busy lives we face, and the way information is sensationalised and commercialised foreclosing on our ability to reflect and make considered judgements? Is it foreclosing on our ability to empathise with others?

Reading is after all an exchange between people. A way of understanding and reflecting on what someone else has written and argued. In this sense reading reminds us of our limited understanding and that this limitation is enriched and developed through taking time to understand and reflect on the opinions and experiences of others. Our ability to interpret, reinterpret and engage the significance and import of the plural points of view in society is a mark of our civilisation and the foundation for democracy. Reading as an act of reflective engagement with the thoughts and ideas of others enables us to escape the here and now and reflect. It helps us to think and it helps us to empathise. I fear that if the pessimists are right and we are losing the art of reading we may lose more than a good way to spend a quiet evening.'

References

[1] Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students  (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987)., p.64