Friday, December 29, 2006

How to Read

It seems silly to imagine that you'll need to learn how to read for this course. You've all been reading since you were four or five and got that first Dr. Seuss book. But to get the most from our work together, you'll have to read in a particular way.

The things we'll be reading have few answers, and very few bits of information that you can take directly from the pile and bolt onto your other work. Instead, you should read the material for this course, including all of our blogs, as though they were poetry or fiction or music rather than some kind of segmented textbook. How do they make you feel? Are they beautiful? What is it about them that resonates with you, or grates upon you? Have you ever seen anything like what they describe?

Leave your highlighers aside; there are no testable nuggets to be mined, no codes with which you must comply. There are only ideas, and how they move you.