The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one'sintellect thrown back on its own resourses. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.
Interpretation
Reading requires serious intellectual engagement and solitude, challenging the reader to rely on their own understanding.
This quote by Neil Postman emphasizes the importance of intellectual preparedness when it comes to reading. The act of engaging with text is depicted as a solitary and rigorous endeavor that demands personal introspection and rational thought, stripping away external influences such as beauty or community. Postman suggests that reading is a serious business that necessitates a focus on the content and an active engagement of the mind.
In practice
In a workshop about critical thinking, this quote can highlight the individual effort needed to process complex information.
Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself.
Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.
A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. […] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.
Sadly, so many arts programs have been eliminated from schools due to budget constraints. These creative outlets are so very important, not only for a child's well-being, but also for self-expression and fun.
Without education, there is no hope for our people and without hope, our future is lost
Most people won't realise that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.
Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.
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