I am sitting in Heathrow Airport in London, on a 30 hour return trip home from South Africa. There is a hustle and bustle around me as travelers hurry to their flights, do some shopping, sleep on the benches, or talk on their phones. My laptop is perched precariously on my lap, as I sit down to write.<\/p>\n
In some ways, this is not the \u201cideal\u201d location for writing, as there are so many distractions and things going on around me. But in another way, it is just the place to reflect on all that I have experienced over the past few weeks. To me, this is the easiest blog post to write, because the book \u201cHow to Read a Book\u201d is a companion to approaching and interpreting many kinds of complex situations, such as the ones we encountered in South Africa.<\/p>\n
On the first level, this book offers a neat parallel and compliment to Jason Clarke\u2019s lecture during our Cape Town Advance, which could aptly be titled \u201cHow to Read a Book, by Jason Clarke\u201d. The ideas laid out by Dr. Clarke in the advance are clearly articulated and expanded throughout this book. It talks about how to x-ray a book, to inspect a book, to read the table of contents, the index, to notice and note what is said about this book elsewhere, including in reviews. All of this helps to quickly discover the \u201cinformation\u201d that is provided and available.<\/p>\n
But in reflecting on the time spent in Cape Town, South Africa, it is clear that this is not the point at all. Reading this book simply for the data that is on offer, is to miss the larger point, which is about formation and ongoing development as a reader, thinker and person.<\/p>\n
This is where the connection to the South Africa Advance begins. The trip and the time together was not simply about \u201cinformation\u201d or head-knowledge about the place or people, the history or culture. The Advance was an opportunity to examine and x-ray the place. To get to know it more intimately and to look at the table of contents, the index and the sources that were cited. As one person on the advance put it, \u201cwe couldn\u2019t have learned in a book what we learned by being here in person and having these conversations.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n I came into this Advance with some knowledge of South Africa and the situation there, but the big difference during this advance, was having critical conversations with local people, stakeholders, and a variety of viewpoints that led to much deeper understanding.<\/p>\n As Adler and Van Doren write, \u201cGetting more information is learning, and so is coming to understand what you did not understand before. But there is an important difference between these two kinds of learning.\u201d[2]<\/a> This book, along with the Advance itself, is interested in the latter form of learning. It isn\u2019t about \u201cgetting more information\u201d, although that can be important. It is really a matter of coming to understand, to know how and why disparate facts and realities fit together.<\/p>\n A good example of this from the book is the chapter entitled, \u201cHow to Read History\u201d. The main point of this chapter is summed up in this way: \u201cit is necessary to read more than one account of the history of an event or period if we want to understand it. Indeed, this is the first rule of reading history\u2026 we cannot hope to understand it if we look at it through the eyes of only one man, or one side, or one faction of modern academic historians.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n I confess that I thought I understood South Africa better than I actually do. I have read a number of books on the country and its history, I follow the news regularly, and I have traveled there before. But during this Advance, by hearing from so many different voices, I came to understand it in a new and more complex way. This is the point of \u201cHow to Read a Book\u201d, and it is also the point of learning how to read a culture or context or situation.<\/p>\n The neat and tidy narrative that most North Americans have about the end of Apartheid and the new \u201cRainbow Nation\u201d that emerged peacefully and happily from its demise, was totally undermined by the conversations we had. Exploring the real situation in South Africa was the equivalent of moving past Adler and Van Doren\u2019s lower two levels of reading (\u201celementary\u201d and \u201cinspectional\u201d), and toward the higher two levels, (\u201canalytical\u201d and \u201csyntopical\u201d). The lower two can be accomplished by arriving in South Africa, visiting the Waterfront, going to various touristic sites, drinking wine and driving on main roads in a large tour-bus. This gives some idea of the country, but only on a cursory and surface level.<\/p>\n Reading South Africa analytically involves critical conversations across the spectrum of experience with the young and old, the black and white, the rich and poor. Those who think \u201ceverything is fine\u201d[4]<\/a> and those who know that it is not[5]<\/a>.<\/p>\n But to move to the final and highest level of reading a book, or a culture, it involves a further step. Syntopical reading has to do with synthesizing the information and experiences and putting them into conversation with my own history, context and self-understanding.<\/p>\n In her presentation during the Advance, Mary Pandiani offered some spiritual direction tools to help our group consider what we were seeing. She described the way that \u201csometimes you read a book, and sometimes, the book reads you\u201d. And that is exactly how I would describe the experience in Cape Town. A dynamic interplay between what I learned, heard and saw in South Africa, and how it applied directly to the North American context.<\/p>\n This is one of my biggest takeaways from this experience. To see how the challenges and realities of South Africa are explicitly linked to those in the United States. As I heard white South Africans come to terms with their history and try to take active steps toward real dialogue and change, I was personally challenged to take this burden on as my own as well. \u00a0This will be my ongoing project as I return home again.<\/p>\n In the end, this is what “How to Read a Book” is all about. \u00a0It isn’t just a technical guide to particular skills for reading and absorbing information. \u00a0It is a book that pushes you to develop critical thinking, to seek understanding and to grow as a person. \u00a0It felt the same way with the Cape Town Advance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> My paraphrase of Jean Ollis<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, \u201cHow To Read A Book\u201d, 11<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, \u201cHow To Read A Book\u201d, 233-234<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> This was the sentiment shared by a large number of Afrikaaner people that I met<\/p>\n