Of reading and writing
Still on the topic, raised in an earlier post, on the value of reading.
I’ve run across two insightful pieces about reading. One study suggests that for every book a typical collegian has read, he or she has viewed 100 films.
No wonder Johnny can’t write.
Then comes college professor Susan Wise Bauer, who cautions in a Mars Hill Audio Journal tape, a kind of audio magazine, against trying to read too many books too fast… .
Her point was not to read for information but to understand what the work says about the human condition.
“I mean, you can gather information quickly,” she told interviewer Ken Myers, “but you cannot understand quickly.”
Good reminder.
Somehow, one suspects the 100-1 tape-book ratio doesn’t stem from collegians carefully working their way through the classics.
Having said all this, we’ve hired maybe 10 Penn State journalism graduates in the past five years, and they’re an impressive bunch with capable language skills.
