I received a book for Christmas that I'm looking forward to enjoying: "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing. My interest was piqued after reading the foreword (a habit I only recently developed) in which Lessing articulated an aspect of academia which has frustrated me since before, and certainly throughout, my college career: a reliance on "authorities" and the written word. Perhaps not with the best outcome, I've always been the type of person who simply did not do schoolwork that I didn't think was worth my time. And part of the reason I majored in math is because it required independent critical thinking, and while there's certainly a curriculum for learning mathematics one is always encouraged, if not required, to question everything and to understand it fully: not simply to read what others have to say and take it for granted. I attempted to take classes from other fields, but was almost always frustrated by the amount of information we were expected to memorize and regurgitate. And consequently I never did as well in these classes as I would of if I'd put in the effort to follow instructions. But I don't regret it. I probably spent that time on other activities that were (in my mind) better uses of my time.
But Lessing also addresses how one should read (as opposed to the academic style of reading) and I found what she wrote quite powerful. She was mainly referring to graduate students in English literature: those that wrote to her inquiring about a book she had written that they were preparing to write their theses on. But I think it applies to academia in general, and even to those who only read books because they're well known and so that they can boast that they have read them. I don't think what she recommends is easy to do (I certainly always feel as if I "ought" to finish a book once I've started it, and it always takes effort on my part to throw it aside if it's terrible). But it's a goal that I'd like to achieve:
"I say to these students who have to spend a year, two years, writing theses about one book: 'There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag -- and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you at forty or fifty -- and vice-versa. Don't read a book out of its right time for you. Remember that for all the books we have in print, are as many that have never reached print, have never been written down -- even now, in this age of compulsive reverence for the written word, history, even social ethic, are taught by means of stories, and the people who have been conditioned into thinking only in terms of what is written -- and unfortunately nearly all the products of our educational system can do no more than this -- are missing what is before their eyes. For instance, the real history of Africa is still in the custody of black storytellers and wise men, black historians, medicine men: it is a verbal history, still kept safe from the white man and his predations. Everywhere, if you keep your mind open, you will find the truth in words not written down. So never let the printed page be your master. Above all, you should know that the fact that you have to spend one year, or two years, on one book, or one author means that you are badly taught -- you should have been taught to read to read your way from one sympathy to another, you should be learning to follow your own intuitive feeling about what you need: that is what you should have been developing, not the way to quote from other people.'"
Ironic, I know, that I now quote her. But as it is intuitive and what I feel like doing I think it's appropriate.
