To read attentively—not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.”
—Marcus Aurelius
An illiterate world is not a good one, but a world where people unthinkingly believe and accept everything they read is not that much better. So it’s great that you’re teaching your kids to read, but are you teaching them to read critically? They need to know: Authors can be wrong. Authors can be questioned. A book is not a one-way conversation. It’s a dialogue between the reader and the writer, between the past and the present. Show them how to take notes, how to disagree, how to question what they see on the page, and how to participate in the dialogue that has begun in the pages they are holding.
They need to know: No one book is definitive. No one school or system has all the answers. Show them how to read books from opposing thinkers. Read one book together . . . then read something that presents a different point of view. Talk about the importance of debate, how to compare and contrast. Teach them to be more than a reader, teach them to be a wide- ranging, critical reader. A questioner. A reviewer. A thinker.