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Relief Through Reading Part I

I am sorry, Readers, but I am going to subject you to a long, round about introduction to a posting about reading. It was inspired by two recent posts by bloggers that I have come to appreciated immensely. I can’t recommend their blogs highly enough. They are great people who have great stories to tell and tell them wonderfully.  The postings that inspired this long post are  Finding Strength to Stand Again  http://findingstrengthtostandagain.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/hitting-my-head-on-glass-ceilings/

and Bended Spoon

http://bendedspoon.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/we-think-too-small-like-the-frog-at-the-bottom-of-the-well-he-thinks-the-sky-is-only-as-big-as-the-top-of-the-well-if-he-surfaced-he-would-have-an-entirely-different-view/

How many of you remember the old tv commercial that ran regularly during  major league baseball games? There would be a scene of a famous relief pitcher warming up, supposedly getting ready to go into the game. An off-screen announcer would say, “How do you spell Relief?” The camera would close in on the pitcher and he would say, “I spell it “R O L A I D S!”

How do you spell Relief? My wife spells it R E A D I N G !

I have been a voracious reader since I was a young kid. I recognize that there are ar least three types of reading. They are recreational, informational and work related reading. Recreational reading Is the act of reading to relax or escape. Informational reading is the act of reading to gain information or knowledge about a topic of interest not directly related to your work. Work related reading is the act of reading of material directly related to your work.

My wife and I are both aged-challenged. (We’re both eligible for Medicare this year. Please don’t tell her, I’ve told you how old she is.) We’ve been married for over 40 years and have known each other for almost 60 years. For all of those years, we’ve been readers, Although I must admit our reading habits are very different. My wife has always been a recreational and informational reader. She has always had two or three books in which she deeply engaged. Much of her recreational reading has included authors like Janette Oke, Terri Blackstock, Ted Dekker, or Frank Peretti. She also enjoys biographies and autobiographies. Her tastes in informational reading have centered on inspiration books like “Fear Not Tomorrow, God is Already There” by Ruth Graham or “Purpose Drive Life” by Rick Warren.

I have always been a voracious reader, but generally, “it had to have a purpose.” Since I have been in higher education all of my adult life, I have always owned a large collection of books. While I was in high school, my parents bought me the entire set of “Great Books of the Western World.” I set still have those classics, along with all the required readings from my college literature courses. I never sold a college text book or required reading after a course was over.  Most of my other books are work related. Although I have some informational books that you would find in the “How –to” or Religious sections of Barnes and Noble. The How to Books were bought to help me with my latest DIY project. The religious books were to help me with a theme for the latest adult Sunday School lesson or a sermon that I was preparing. To borrow a phrase from Rick Warren and use it out of his context, my reading has almost always been  “purpose driven.”

For years, my wife would chide me with the comment, “Why don’t you read something for fun?” I would reply, “I don’t have time for that.” Her response was “Try it, you may find that you like it.” My response back to her was, “The time that I want to dedicate to fun is better spent antiquing, exercising or doing DIY projects  like remodeling rooms, insulating and putting vinyl siding on our old house, adding a deck, or enclosing our back porch.

Occasionally, I would watch sporting events like basketball, baseball or automotive races on television. My wife and I also both like to watch new segments of “This Old House” or “Antiques Road Show.” We would take this last passion one step further by trying to find unexplored antique shops and digging through them for undiscovered treasures. Those things were fun. Fortunately for me, my wife also suffered from the DIY and antiquing viruses. We spent many weekends together trying to satisfy the cravings that those bugs would cause. If we were not at home working on the latest DIY project, we would be on a road trip to find one more of those unexplored antique shops.

On a Saturday when we didn’t have a pressing DIY project hanging over our heads we would get up early, and tell our college-age daughters that we were going for a ride. The girls would glance at each other, and one would say, “We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” Many times they were right. After finding an unexplored antique shop and digging through it until closing time, we would find a nice restaurant and a cute inn or motel and spend the night.

On each of these trips, I did most of the driving and my wife would pass the time in the car reading one more fascinating chapter of her latest engrossing novel or biography. Every once in awhile she would stop reading and say to me, “You really should read this book, you would really enjoy it.” I would pause for a moment then in all seriousness say, “I can’t right now, I’m driving.” My wife would sigh and say, ”I didn’t mean right at this moment. What about this coming week?” I would respond by saying “I have some work that must get done this coming week and all my reading will have to center on that job.”  She would sign again and go back to her reading. I guess she almost figured out that I was a lost cause, until she came up with a brilliant idea. She went to the local library and checked out some audio books, so on our next road trip, we both listened to someone read those books  to us. Using this technique, we read Mitch Album’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” and several John Gresham novels, including “The Client” and “The Rain Maker” plus a number of cat mysteries. I must admit the audio books did help to make the miles go more smoothly. Although I can’t remember the titles or the authors, other than Album and Gresham, I do remember most of the story-lines and I will also admit that this was a fun way to read.

All of this changed for us on March 16, 2009. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my story check back to some of my early postings. On that date I had what appeared to be a stroke. However, it wasn’t a stroke, a blood vessel in a benign tumor attached to my brain exploded (surgeon’s word) and the tumor imploded (again surgeon’s word)  creating all the symptoms of a stroke. After the removal of  the remains of a dead tumor, I have battled balance issues, fatique, aphasia, epilepsy and most recently Parkinson’s disease. I took a medically induced break from my life as an academic administrator, first on disability and now officially on retirement. Supposedly that should give me more time to read. I will tell that part of the story in Relief Through Reading, Parts II through V. In these posts, I will also share how Finding Strength and Bended Spoons have inspired me to expand my reading list somewhat, read  more and write about it.

As indicated above on March 16, 2009, I was introduced to a new phase in my life that supoosedly  should give me more time for reading, but I must admit that old habits die hard. It has taken me two years to get to the point where I can pick me a book and almost read it just for fun. However, instead of throwing open my reading list to many more recreational reading books, I have taken up more informational  reading. I have dropped the DIY readings and picked up readings about neurological dysfunctions, such as “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks and ‘ My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Taylor, and higher education like Charles Murrays’ “Real Education” or Mike Rose’s “Lives on the Boundary.”.  The neuologiacl books are helping me understand what I am going through and what I can expect ahead of me. The higher education books are keeping me in touch with the academy. The next three books on my reading list are “Awakenings” by Sacks, “Always Looking Up” by Michael J. Fox, and “Reading in the Brain” by Stanislas Dehaene.

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Can Faculty Learn from a Broadway Musical

An article that first appeared in the July 4, 2010 e-edition of the Technology Section of The Chronicle of Higher Education was repeated in the July 9, 2010 e-edition of Academe Today. The article was entitled “Linked In With: A Writer Who Questions the Wisdom of Teaching with Technology.”  Because I was familiar with Carr’s writings, this article caught my attention and I had to read it, even though I was confident of what I was going to find. The author of the article, Marc Parry, was talking about and interviewing Nicholas Carr, the author of a book entitled, “The Shallows,” and many articles, including “IT Doesn’t Matter” and “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“As usual, Carr was questioning the efficacy of technology in assisting in the teaching and learning process. This article was vintage Carr.

I believe education is meeting students where they are and helping them to get to where they want and ought to be. If where they want to be is not where they ought to be, then our first job in education is to help them see where they ought to be. I believe every prospective teacher should watch the musical, “My Fair Lady.” Can teachers learn anything from a Broadway musical? I think they can if they are paying attention, especially if they are asked to reflect on one particular scene. The scene takes place in the Professor’s study, when he and the Colonel are celebrating Eliza’s triumphant debut at the gala. Colonel Pickering keeps saying, “You said that you could do it, and you did it.” Professor Higgins replies:”Yes I did it.” But did you see Eliza in the corner of the room crying and sobbing, “What have you done? “ They replied:”We made you a lady.” Eliza responded, “I never asked to be a lady. All I wanted was to be able to speak well enough to sell flowers at the corner shop. Now that I am a lady, there is nothing left for me to do, but to sell myself and marry a gentleman.” The Professor and the Colonel used good pedagogy and “taught her well”, but they didn’t listen to what she wanted, and they definitely didn’t help her understand what it was to be a lady and why that was important.

The following exchange between Perry and  Carr reminded me of that scene from “My Fair Lady:”Perry asked Carr: “If the Internet is making us so distracted, how did you manage to write a 224-page book and read all the dense academic studies that much of it is based on?” Carr responded, “It was hard. The reason I started writing it was because I noticed in myself this increasing inability to pay attention to stuff, whether it was reading or anything else. When I started to write the book, I found it very difficult to sit and write for a couple of hours on end or to sit down with a dense academic paper.” I have found that most of our students today don’t know how to sit down for a couple of hours to read or write. They mentally and physically can’t sit for a couple of hours to read or write. They definitely don’t know how to sit down and read a dense paper. They also don’t know why that should be important. It is not enough for us to tell them just to do it, because it is important and it is good for them. How often to our question of why, do we accept the answer, “Because I told you so; besides it is good for you; or you ought to do it.” At one point in the article after renouncing the use of the internet, Carr says, “my abilities to concentrate did seem to strengthen again. I felt in a weird way intellectually or mentally calmer. And I could sit down and write or read with a great deal of attentiveness for quite a long time.” Our students don’t know why that is important for them unless we help them learn that. Just telling that it is good and that it works for us is not enough. If we want to reach these students, we need to meet them where they are and help them see the benefits of the reflective pursuit of knowledge and truth for them. If we don’t do that, these students might well be like Eliza, sitting in the corner crying that we didn’t listen to them, and we haven’t. The other more likely possibility is they will give up, walk away and never engage in the reflective pursuit of knowledge.

My next question may sound like heresy coming from someone within the academy, “Is the reflective pursuit of knowledge the only way to obtain knowledge? The ancient Greeks allowed and even encouraged at least three different ways of knowing, theoria, poiesis and praxis. Theoria is the word from which we get our words theory and theoretical. In ancient Greece, it meant contemplation or seeing by observation. It developed into the idea of the theoretical pursuit of knowledge and truth through contemplation or reflection. Poiesis is the word from which we get our word poetry. It meant to make or produce. It developed into the idea of creating something of value. Praxis is the word from which we get our words practice or practical. It meant action. It developed into the idea of knowledge applied to one’s actions. The goal of theoria  was truth. The goal of poiesis was a product. The goal of praxis was action.

I challenge those of us in the academy, are we open to different ways of knowing and learning? Are we willing to meet our students where they are, listen to where they want to be, and help them see where they could and ought to be? Are we willing to help them get there, even if it means using multiple ways of knowing and learning that may not at first seem comfortable to us?

is the word from which we get our word poetry. It meant to make or produce. It developed into the idea of creating something of value. Praxis is the word from which we get our words practice or practical. It meant action. It developed into the idea of knowledge applied to one’s actions. The goal of theoria was truth. The goal of poiesis was a product. The goal of praxis was action.
I challenge those of us in the academy, are we open to different ways of knowing and learning? Are we willing to meet our students where they are, listen to where they want to be, and help them see where they could and ought to be? Are we willing to help them get there, even if it means using multiple ways of knowing and learning that may at first not seem comfortable to us?