On Reading

I am the slowest reader I know (outside of a few elementary school kids), yet again and again I've found that my slow reading speed allows me to pick up on details that my peers who read the same passages in as little as half the time often miss until they have re-read the passage two or three times.  Why is this?  Is the speed that I read at the key?

I've often wondered why professors do little but review the text in so many classes and why students seem to find the minor leaps in information, that could be easily obtained through a few moments' analysis, so surprising.  Perhaps this fault of analytical review lies not with students as much as it may be blamed on the way they were trained.

As students we have been told to complete our work quickly.  From the SAT to the Georgia High School Graduation Test to college testing, the speed at which a student is capable of reading and "analyzing" a block of text is made central to today's learning environment.  But how much analysis can be done when a student is allotted less then a minute to read a page if he wishes to have any time to work on the questions?

Richard Restak, M.D. attempted to explain how reading and analysis has changed over the years in a passage from his book Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot where he describes the affect of the transition from reading aloud to silently as a societal norm:

While this transformation brought obvious advantages, it also resulted  in people's employing different speeds and rhythms for thinking, reading, and writing.  While this isn't always a bad thing[...] it can lead to stressful feelings and loss of focus.  At times, thoughts come faster than the thinker can put into words.  The manic patient's tortured complaint of a "racing mind" represents the extreme of this tendency.

Perhaps the reason why so few students comprehend what they have read in depth is because of this habit of reading passages faster then they can actually comprehend them.  Maybe the problem also branches from a simple misunderstanding of what it means to  truly read.  

According to dictionary.com, "read" is a verb that means "to look at carefully so as to understand the meaning of" or "to make out the significance of by scrutiny or observation."

What many of us find ourselves doing, and are all too often encouraged to do, is skim passages which is defined as "to read, study, consider, treat, etc., in a superficial or cursory manner."

So, the big question is this:  Are you reading or are you skimming?  Maybe we should all try reading a little more and skimming a little less.  Now I'm not saying that you can't skim over the directions on how to turn on your iPod, but maybe give the classics a real chance, read them.

Good luck and happy reading.