Challenging Relationship
It was intended to be a fun afternoon trip for a young boy and his mom—a special time when just the two of them could go and explore. For many boys, exploring is at the top of the fun list. Sticks, rocks, and a pond full of frogs quickly pop into their minds. But this trip was intended to be different, as it had a much loftier goal. They we headed to the city library!
I still remember that specific day nearly forty years ago. My mom, who is still a superstar in my eyes, was so excited for us to discover new places, see new things, and stretch our imaginations through books. However, despite her excitement and positive energy leading up to our outing, I was overflowing with hesitation and anxiety. Reading was a monumental task for me. I struggled to keep up with classmates, was flagged for additional help in school, and was petrified to read aloud in front of others. Especially reading out loud in front of my superstar mom! Thankfully, we can both look back and get a little giggle out of our drastically different expectations and experiences that fateful day. But still, all these years later, reading is a massive challenge for me.
My relationship with reading has again been confronted as I worked through Adler and Van Doren’s How to Read a Book. I have been faced with the questions, “Have I been doing it wrong this whole time? Is it OK that reading is challenging? Is it even possible for me to do it differently?”. Thankfully, simply becoming aware that the laborious chore of reading a book, word for word, from the beginning to the end has a name is refreshing. Elemental Reading, as it’s called, can be likened to mechanical reading. It’s not a process to gain understanding but instead a base function within written language.1 This tiny insight brings me mountains of relief. It explains so much about why I can repeatedly read a chapter in a book while not remembering what I read. If understanding is not the intended outcome of Elemental reading, I have been approaching my basic style of reading with unfair expectations for decades.
During these decades of a challenging relationship with reading, I began a crude way of gleaning off the general concept of a book. Adler and Van Doren refer to this process of general understanding as Inspectional Reading. Their approach is robust, detailed, and polished. Yet, conceptually, our two approaches generally bring you to the same place. There is, however, one glaring difference. My approach has been drenched in guilt. While I have a vast appetite for learning and knowledge, I feel incredibly guilty for saying that I “read a book” when I did not read the whole thing. It’s like a piece of my integrity goes missing by allowing people to believe I read it when, in fact, I did not read it all. This guilt for gleaning over a book further complicates my decades-old relationship with reading.
Learning, Knowledge, and Ethics
An appetite for information and knowledge keeps bringing me back to books. However, there has been a disconnect between internalizing information and organizing it in a meaningful manner. Not to mention trying to remember it. While part of this has been due to my elementary reading style, the other part has been due to my lack of note-taking skills. The task of jotting down literary notes or fleeting thoughts seems so simple.2 But which thoughts or what concepts are deserving of the effort? What is “important” enough to be written down for later use, and am I really even going to use it?
Insights to these questions surface in How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens. The simply complex discipline of making a note of the things that seemed important at the time will be a great start for me. Coming back to them later in the day to see if they are still as thought-provoking or revelational as they were a few hours ago will help filter the substantial concepts from the rest. If it is substantial, slip that note away for later use. Building a catalog of thought will hopefully help me shield against bias that I may not even be aware of. 3 4
As more time allows, Paul’s book deserves additional attention. Specifically, digestion of the concept that ethics must be removed from other forms of thought.5 According to the author, this is due to the legitimate possibility that religious, social, and legal practices may or may not exist within ethics.6 While I am unsure of this statement, the inherent need for an absolute truth that enables ethics currently produces a conundrum.
1 ChatGPT, “Is elementary reading comparable mechanical reading”, Open AI, January 15, 2025.
2 Ahrens, Sönke, . How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers, (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 21.
3 Ahrens. Smart Notes, 65.
5 Paul, Richard, and Linda Elder. The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. 8th edition. Thinker’s Guide Library. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. 47.
6 Paul and Elder. Miniature Guide, 48.
About the Author
Darren Banek
2 responses to “Challenging Relationship”
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Who knew that reading in an academic way, such as Adler and Van Doren outline, would lead to feelings of guilt? I share the sentiment. Are we cutting a corner somehow? I appreciate the way you shared your complicated relationship with reading. I, too, am hopeful that engaging with texts by taking smart notes will both make me more precise in inspectional reading and deepen my comprehension. Here’s to a growing semester!
Darren, I resonated with your description of being a poor reader. I was in the first grade and couldn’t read at all. My teacher, Mrs. Blackburn, pulled me aside during reading time for about six weeks, and we met in the janitor closet. She taught me to read, and I am forever grateful to her. I went back after I graduated college and thanked her again.
I think I remember some of the 3rd years telling us in DC that they still felt guilty for not “reading” the books. I don’t remember who said it, but one of the ladies said that she had a stack of books that she wanted to go back and re-read after the program because she didn’t feel like she gave them enough time.