​Learning to read and reading to learn

Last week, we wrote about the importance of writing purposefully—putting quality over quantity and producing thoughtful, well-planned pieces instead of empty commentaries. Today we turn to the quality and depth we ought to require of our reading. Old-fashioned as it sounds, people do not read in the same way they used to. We go through Buzzfeed listicles like potato chips and skim Facebook’s trending stories and Twitter’s 140-character blasts for news. While we crave intelligence and informed opinions, our attention spans are shorter and our time more thinly stretched.

Research shows that although web traffic is soaring, most people fail to read past a headline or the first paragraph of an article. While a person might open 10 different news links, it is likely that beyond absorbing titles and keywords, they do not gain much else. The tendency to reach for easily consumable material is understandable. People are surrounded by a veritable 24/7 buffet of delicious, addictive junk. It is easy to ignore or only explore the surface of a tough 5-thousand word New Yorker article when there exist a mélange of flashy, easily digestible 100-word news recaps watered down with gifs and hashtags.

There is an opportunity cost to sitting down and thoughtfully engaging material: time not spent scanning the front pages of Reddit and Buzzfeed; time not spent lounging in the common room with friends; time not spent falling asleep to Netflix asking if we are still there. When we neglect to maintain a healthy reading diet, we slip into a habit of reading via high-volume, low-depth checks of our favorite news sites and Twitter feeds. When that happens, minds aren’t challenged, opinions aren’t tested and strengthened, and meaningful conversations can’t take place.

It is important to slow down—to stop chowing down at that buffet and to instead be thoughtful about our information intake. Sitting down to read a nice long-form article or essay and then letting that information or the arguments made marinate in the mind allows for the enrichment of perspectives.

With the possibility of a 10-month Duke Experience course for first-years in the current curriculum revision proposal, students will have an academically structured opportunity to practice this kind of mindful reading and engagement. It would add to course to incorporate student- and faculty-sourced books taken over months to dig into, reflect on and respond to in writing and discussion. Being held accountable to take time and engage lengthy works gives insight that most students do not reach on their own.

Ultimately, thoughtful engagement need not even take the form of reading articles and books. Consuming almost any kind of explorative work presents an opportunity for meaningful reflection. The digital world features a range of writing quality, but fantastic thought-provoking works are still easily available at our fingertips. Deep television like "The Wire", podcasts like "Intelligence Squared" and swaths of well-produced documentary series offer exciting ways to stimulate the mind.

Walking through life reading blurbs is no way to experience the world. In the same line of reasoning, neither is absorbing a constant flow of information from one source. Reading and learning should push past confirmation bias, challenge views and suggest discomfort to the point of fairly challenging your opinions. If we want to move conversation past the point of senseless chatter and spark serious discussions, we all ought to devote more time to reading meaningful pieces.