Reading & Re-Searching

Early on Janet noted the possibility of our students coming to the discussion without having read the book. Perhaps some of the unfamiliarity of the language (the recent thread of our conversation) will contribute to their giving up (for those who do open the book and give it a go). Then, of course, there will be those who will barely crack the book, by habit, because of time constraints, etc., and those who will read it through and may or may not enjoy the “pleasant bafflement” Fred finds as one fruit of the reader’s efforts. (Gotta agree with Donna here. A great phrase.)

I can’t help but recall a bit of a debate that ensued in an English class when I was an undergraduate (here). A professor (I can’t quite remember which one and wouldn’t want to name him or her if I did since they all, believe it or not, have not yet retired) complained of a student habit of looking in a book index to find the needed pages of information, rather than reading a book through every time a book is chosen from a shelf.

Well, I gave up on being an English major after two years of grad school and became a librarian instead. And guess what? Want to know a secret about librarians? Librarians LOVE an index. We thrive on using any tool that lets us pluck out of a crowded sea of words just the few that we need, the few that will answer our questions.

In fact, a recent Booklist blog, a blog intended for librarians, discusses the dark little secret Pierre Bayard reveals in an essay, “How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read” (http://link.ixs1.net/s/lt?id=y271869&si=l98451041&pc=j2022&ei=t135379)

Librarians are experts at not reading books (And you always thought all we did was sit around all day and read books. Right.) You might say that librarians are the grown up versions of those students who won’t read what is assigned, but I don’t think that is true. Most librarians love to read. We are just facing time management issues and find that reading about a book or reading parts of a book can often be more efficient for us, or more on point for us, depending on our need, than reading a book.

But back to our students here. No one ever doubts that Brooklyn College students are pressed for time. And no one doubts that they live in a world of disembodied text, where traveling by a web of hyperlinks is the norm. Linear reading is for the dinosaurs. Book chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words have all jumped out of the bindings and make themselves available through google keyword searching. Does anyone read the “whole thing” any more? Can we even identify the “whole thing” with so much content nowadays?

So we accept that our students read things piecemeal and recognize that we have to work with it as a factor. So here we are, ready to be their “professors-for-one-hour,” and wonder how demanding we can be.

Do we want to anonymously pole the students before the lesson and find out if they’ve read the book? Do we take the tact that if they haven’t read the book, we can teach something about the book by starting with the reviews in the front and on the back cover and then move on to the painting of the author and figure out what that is all about?

Starting with the reviews is interesting because it may be where we want students to competently go after they master readings of primary sources. So what’s the big deal if we work it in reverse?

One of the real teaching tools I see in approaching a book like Lethem’s is that the richness of cultural content cries out for a lesson on doing research, for a lesson on how to learn more about a primary source. And isn’t that where we want our students to be heading? Isn’t the number one competency we hope they gain from their four years of college the ability to think critically, to figure things out?

In fact, when Lethem sets out to defend “The Searchers,” he becomes a model for the thinker as a researcher. Lethem views the primary source multiple times (picture the undergraduate reviewing for an exam), interviews people to gather opinions (true for many undergraduates and inescapable for our social scientists), seeks out expert opinion when he speaks to the film professor, goes on field trips, reads secondary sources. Can we find a better model than that for how to do research, how to be a searcher yourself?

I wish everyone of use great success in what is purported to be the teaching of the first book each of our freshmen will read (or not read) for college.

So many books. So little time.

From the Library,

Beth

_________________________________________________