Read This, Read That
My oldest son has become an avid reader, bringing back my own memories of reading
Way Down Cellar,
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, and
The Phantom of Walkaway Hill. So, when he asked me one day why I don't read--as in novels--my answer surprised me. "I read a lot at work."
It's a simple answer to a complex question. Reading--any reading--involves comprehension to connect new information to what is already known. According to The National Institute for Literacy, monitoring comprehension by asking questions while reading is one effective strategy. Pausing to reflect ... makes all the difference.
But we aren't sitting in an armchair on a lazy Sunday afternoon reading the weekend paper. We are constantly reading emails, paper memos, posted notices, bulletin boards, financial reports, faxes, information system reports, spreadsheets, regulations, policies, procedures, patient charts, physician orders, reference texts, package inserts and magazines (even blogs!). Sometimes, all in the same day. And we are expected to produce accurate and timely test results using this information.
A concept of information literacy has emerged. The library, the reference text and the periodical are eclipsed by concepts such as business, computer, health and media literacy. To be "information literate," you need to be able to find what you need and decide if it's any good. A National Forum for Information Literacy was created in 1989 to tackle our "increasingly fragmented information base."
This implies two things. One, what we read being accurate or even relevant decreases with volume; we have become speed readers. The second is "information overload," coined by Alvin Toffler almost 40 years ago in Future Shock. More information adds to stress and the likelihood of forgetting--or not seeing--something important.
It's enough to make me want to curl up with a good book.