Monday, August 16, 2010

A Model Citizen

For your reading pleasure, I have posted an example of an excellent news response. This is not to say that it is a perfect response, and it is not to say that all excellent responses must look like this one. The thing that is most striking about this response is its depth. Many of you are reporting on a single article. This response covers a week's worth of news.

If you need a few more hints, you can review these suggestions, posted earlier this month.

The sample response begins below:

Did you know that plans are currently in progress for a $100 million, 13-story mosque to be built near ground zero, the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack? Are you aware that Proposition 8 has recently been appealed, prolonging the conclusion of this measure which regards the legality of same-sex marriage in the state of California? If you are at all attentive to the world around us, then you probably already knew of the significance of these two events. Both of these issues are extremely divided matters, and most of us have our own deep convictions regarding subjects such as these. But who are we to come to such conclusions when so often we don’t even know the bigger picture? Did you know that, despite the controversy over the mosque, the property on which it will potentially be built is already owned by a Muslim organization? If that is the case, who are we to say whether they can or cannot construct a building used to honor their beliefs on their property - no matter how much their faith may differ from our own. The same matter of equality obviously applies to the Proposition 8 appeal; but not everyone is aware that this controversial proposition may soon end up at the mercy of the Supreme Court, with its ruling affecting our nation as a whole, not just the state of California. After a long discussion with my aunt and uncle about the events of today and where our society is headed, I have come to realize one thing: It is so easy for us to jump to conclusions concerning today’s current events, but so often we don’t even have enough information to see the bigger picture at hand. There is so much going on in this nation behind closed doors, and there are so many more details pertaining to the events that we are aware of which could easily change how we feel about a lot of different issues.

Last Friday as I was catching up on the latest news, I stumbled across a photo essay by TIME magazine partnered with CNN.com entitled “Women of Afghanistan: Living Under the Taliban Threat.” The essay consists of 13 pictures and captains and gives just a peek into the lives of the women in Afghanistan and the effect of Sharia law upon their culture. It portrays their stories of hardship and persecution as well as success and accomplishment, having overcome the many obstacles which have stood in their way. As a female myself, I think it’s important for me to realize how fortunate I am to have all the opportunities and freedoms that I do. It is so easy to become oblivious to how good we really have it here in America. I can’t believe what some of these girls have suffered through, and I think this essay is a wonderful example of the power of photography; it even prompted me to do a little research of my own on the history of the Taliban. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2007161,00.html

Another story that caught my eye is one that I have been following for a quite a while. Almost every day this week I read a new article concerning the Gulf oil spill. Monday was filled with news of BP’s “static kill” and “injectivity” tests which were scheduled for the next day, and on Tuesday I read an article on page B1, 2 in the Oregonian which told of the many endangered species in the Gulf. The following day I read a CNN article, http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/04/gulf.oil.spill/index.html , containing a statement from Obama which read, “…the long battle to stop the leak and contain the oil is finally coming to an end…” It seems too good to be true to me, but like I said earlier, we can never jump to conclusions until we know all of the facts. I was, however, shocked today after reading an article found at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/06/feds-keen-bps-possible-drilling-plans-blown-gulf-reservoir/ which stated that with the oil spill cleaning up, there is still talk of BP possibly drilling in the same location in the future. In my opinion, it is far too soon to even consider drilling at the site of the spill. After talking the matter over with my aunt and uncle, however, I began to see the possibility of drilling in the Gulf again in a different light. My aunt said that because we don’t know what exactly caused the explosion in the first place and because the problem was most likely with the equipment and not the location itself, then there is just as much chance of risk drilling somewhere else as there is in the Gulf. After considering these details, I can see why drilling in the Gulf again someday might not be as horrible as I had originally thought.

News of our new Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has been quite the buzz this week. Obama’s new nominee is now officially a part of our nation’s judicial system, according to CNN.com, the Daily Oklahoman, and several other news sources I have consulted. There has been much controversy over Kagan’s lack of experience, as she has never been a judge before and many of her views on important topics are unknown. After talking to my uncle, who is very knowledgeable and informed of newsworthy topics, I learned that when Kagan was teaching in college she believed in and supported the integration of Sharia law into our nation. I personally find this odd, not just because she’s Jewish, but also because of the implications that Sharia law has on women. The fact that she will be residing over courts dealing with other controversial issues in our country makes me a little apprehensive as to her beliefs and how she will rule.

In addition to news regarding Proposition 8, the Mosque at Ground Zero, the Gulf spill, and our new Supreme Court Justice, I have come across several other newsworthy articles this week. The fight regarding the Arizona Immigration law continues, and the search is still on for young Kyron Horman, with local authorities receiving five to 10 tips every hour. On CNN.com I read of how the government is facing problems with WikiLeaks, which possesses information that is putting the security of our nation in danger. There has recently even been news that the remains of John the Baptist have allegedly been found in Bulgaria. The list goes on and on, with so many stories and features it is impossible to keep up. But if I have learned one thing this week apart from the articles and stories themselves, it is indeed that we never have all the details, and therefore can’t always jump to the conclusions that we so often do.

Here are some links to a few more of the articles I read this week: http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/us/2010/08/03/ground-zero-mosque/#slide=1

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/04/california.same.sex.ruling/index.html

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/05/the-buzz-on-proposition-8-ruling/?hpt=C2

And here is the web address to one of my favorite news cites, the CNN Belief Blog. I find it extremely interesting because of its vast array of topics and subjects, and because of how much my faith means to me personally. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/

Sunday, August 15, 2010

How to Mark a Book

The following essay might provide some ideas for taking notes while you're reading Huck Finn. This essay advocates for vandalizing books, which I highly recommend if you own the book. If, however, you are using the school's copy of Huck Finn, I strongly encourage you to invest in a lot of sticky notes.

How to Mark a Book

By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.

You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.

I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love. You shouldn't mark up a book which isn't yours.

Librarians (or your friends) who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you should. If you decide that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have to buy them. Most of the world's great books are available today, in reprint editions.

There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher's icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your blood stream to do you any good.

Confusion about what it means to "own" a book leads people to a false reverence for paper, binding, and type -- a respect for the physical thing -- the craft of the printer rather than the genius of the author. They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, to possess the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting his bookplate inside the cover. Having a fine library doesn't prove that its owner has a mind enriched by books; it proves nothing more than that he, his father, or his wife, was rich enough to buy them.

There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and best sellers -- unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns woodpulp and ink, not books.) The second has a great many books -- a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books or many -- every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.)

Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact and unblemished a beautifully printed book, an elegantly bound edition? Of course not. I'd no more scribble all over a first edition of 'Paradise Lost' than I'd give my baby a set of crayons and an original Rembrandt. I wouldn't mark up a painting or a statue. Its soul, so to speak, is inseparable from its body. And the beauty of a rare edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a statue.

But the soul of a book "can" be separate from its body. A book is more like the score of a piece of music than it is like a painting. No great musician confuses a symphony with the printed sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini's score of the G minor Symphony is so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can read it. The reason why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores -- marks them up again and again each time he returns to study them--is the reason why you should mark your books. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author.

Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it keeps you awake. (And I don't mean merely conscious; I mean awake.) In the second place; reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The marked book is usually the thought-through book. Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you had, or the thoughts the author expressed. Let me develop these three points.

If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it must be active. You can't let your eyes glide across the lines of a book and come up with an understanding of what you have read. Now an ordinary piece of light fiction, like, say, "Gone With the Wind," doesn't require the most active kind of reading. The books you read for pleasure can be read in a state of relaxation, and nothing is lost. But a great book, rich in ideas and beauty, a book that raises and tries to answer great fundamental questions, demands the most active reading of which you are capable. You don't absorb the ideas of John Dewey the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee. You have to reach for them. That you cannot do while you're asleep.

If, when you've finished reading a book, the pages are filled with your notes, you know that you read actively. The most famous "active" reader of great books I know is President Hutchins, of the University of Chicago. He also has the hardest schedule of business activities of any man I know. He invariably reads with a pencil, and sometimes, when he picks up a book and pencil in the evening, he finds himself, instead of making intelligent notes, drawing what he calls 'caviar factories' on the margins. When that happens, he puts the book down. He knows he's too tired to read, and he's just wasting time.

But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in your memory. To set down your reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those questions.

Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when you had finished writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. But you don't have to throw the paper away. The margins (top as bottom, and well as side), the end-papers, the very space between the lines, are all available. They aren't sacred. And, best of all, your marks and notes become an integral part of the book and stay there forever. You can pick up the book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. It's like resuming an interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off.

And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; naturally, you'll have the proper humility as you approach him. But don't let anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to be solely on the receiving end. Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn't consist in being an empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even has to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. And marking a book is literally an expression of differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.

There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here's the way I do it:

  • Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements.
  • Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
  • Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won't hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
  • Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
  • Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
  • Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
  • Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author's points in the order of their appearance.

The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (I've already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.

If you're a die-hard anti-book-marker, you may object that the margins, the space between the lines, and the end-papers don't give you room enough. All right. How about using a scratch pad slightly smaller than the page-size of the book -- so that the edges of the sheets won't protrude? Make your index, outlines and even your notes on the pad, and then insert these sheets permanently inside the front and back covers of the book.

Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your reading. It probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for intelligent reading. Some things should be read quickly and effortlessly and some should be read slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to read different things differently according to their worth. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through you -- how many you can make your own. A few friends are better than a thousand acquaintances. If this be your aim, as it should be, you will not be impatient if it takes more time and effort to read a great book than it does a newspaper.

You may have one final objection to marking books. You can't lend them to your friends because nobody else can read them without being distracted by your notes. Furthermore, you won't want to lend them because a marked copy is kind of an intellectual diary, and lending it is almost like giving your mind away.

If your friend wishes to read your Plutarch's Lives, Shakespeare, or The Federalist Papers, tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat -- but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Bragging Rights

Congratulations to Eliot Kurfman, one of your classmates next year. He had a poem published in the July edition of the online poetry journal Four and Twenty. If you go to their website, click on the July issue to download it. Right now, it's at the top of the page, but if you dilly dally, you might need to click on the "Past Issues" tab. If you're a poet yourself, go ahead and click on the "Submissions" tab. It tells you everything you need to know about how to submit your work.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Back to School

I try - usually unsuccessfully - to avoid thinking about school during June and July; after all, it's good to rest my brain and recharge my teaching batteries. However, when August 1st rolls around, it's time for my brain to go back to school.

Several of your classmates have already submitted one or more of their news reading assignments. Below I've listed a few things that they've done well and a few things that will go better in the future. If you're just getting started (remember, you need to start on or before Augist 8th!), feel free to learn from the experiences of those who have gone before you.

Things that went well:
1) Day-by-day accounts. For example, "On Tuesday, I read about [this event] in this [news source]. Here's a summary and here are my opinions ..."
2) Citations and / or links to the articles you read. One of the best things about teaching is learning from my students. When you send me links and articles, I get smarter. Hooray for all of us!
3) Reflections. Almost everybody shared their opinions about the news that they read. It's far more interesting to hear your insights, personal connections, and evaluations than your summaries.

Things that could go better:
1) Depth. One news story per week isn't enough, even if it's examined in several sources. Try to consider three stories per week.
2) Talking about the news. Don't just read the news, talk about it! Talk with your friends, your parents, your pets! Then be sure to tell me about your conversations.