Daniel Regan: Reading for the sake of reading

At Northern Vermont University — Johnson, where the author served as dean of academic affairs.

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

JOHNSON, VT.

Typical lists of core competencies for undergraduates feature written communication, critical thinking and information literacy, among others, but merely presume, leaving unstated, the bedrock importance of reading skills. Lifelong learning, a dedication to which is part of practically all mission or aspirational statements, includes the ongoing practice and continued appreciation of those core skills, including—presumably—reading.

What is rarely discussed, however, is why we continue to read. Yet to that seemingly simple question there can be several answers, which may differ for our varied student bodies: traditional-age students, say, compared to the adult learners that colleges and universities seek increasingly to attract. The answers may also change for individuals as they advance through the life cycle. These changes deserve greater awareness and more explicit attention. Specifically, why bother to read when you’re old?

I have always loved to read. But why? The answers are much different now than they were before. And what I get from my reading has changed, too. I have long considered reading the bottomless well to which I could turn as needed, a singularly empowering resource in my life. If I found myself in a pinch, I figured I could read my way out of it, by learning what I needed to know. Now though, if I am honest with myself, increasing my stock of deployable information and skills is not really why I read, even if one does amass a good bit of knowledge, some of it usable, along the way.

For the most part, however, I don’t read to learn, especially when it comes to reading more extended pieces. The exceptions, while significant, are either mundane (most recently, for instance, how to clean my coffeemaker) or quotidien (regular information and perspectives from newspapers and magazines). For more in-depth reading, staying au courant is clearly not my goal—since so much of what I read is not particularly current.

Nor do I read for purposes of explicit self-improvement, about which I generally care very little at this point in my life. Again, there are exceptions: for instance, of late, Ibram X. Kendi’s works on antiracism. But I’m not reading great novels or major works of non-fiction as a means of working through problems or applying insights gained to my own life. In fact, I am not really using what I read for any particular purpose—surely not to identify a salient reference or mark a potential quotation for a research paper.

It is also not to acquire bits and pieces of knowledge, Jeopardy-style, that I read. There’s scarcely room in my memory registers for that. In truth I can barely, without a jog, conjure up what I’ve read a relatively short time ago. The recent experience of reading Joyce Carol Oates’s and Christopher R. Beha’s (eds.) Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, for instance, with its 48 selections over 760 pages, was brilliant but dizzying. I would stumble, if asked just days later, to pinpoint which stories I found most striking.

But luckily, instant recall doesn’t matter so much, because I’m no longer aiming to impart what I’ve read to others. I taught for a long time, and loved it, but do so no longer, except for some weekly tutoring at an adult basic-education center. Thus I am no longer an interpreter of or mediator between the works of a primary author and an audience of students or colleagues. Now what I read stays mostly inside, in intense but internal dialogue, except for occasional comments to college-age kids or my spouse. And I surely do not read just to pass the time. There are far easier ways of doing that.

So, why read (or re-read) Middlemarch? The Last Tsar? The Awakening? Simply Einstein?

The real reason I read, and derive so much pleasure from reading, is because of its intense present-ness. Reading provides an absorption in the moment that, for me, few other activities can match. This form of radical present-ness, an immersion in a different setting, group of people, sometimes another culture or society, is not a form of escape. I never forget who and where I am or my separation from what transpires on the pages I am reading or scrolling through. But the act of reading nevertheless lifts me, and elevates ordinary existence.    .

That is why I, now into my 70s, continue reading. With luck I hope to continue well beyond. It won’t be because the works appear on some bucket list composed of the works on the Harvard Five-Foot Shelf or a list of 100 Best Novels, or even the collected works of a particular author. It is freeing to read without a central utilitarian purpose, however valid it might be. Until recently I don’t think I recognized sufficiently the possibility of—well—just reading.

Here are three suggestions by way of conclusion. First, I would encourage the explicit inclusion of reading as a core learning outcome, rather than merely as the assumed foundation for other competencies such as critical thinking, information literacy and written communication. Second, encourage students to consider the varied purposes for which they might read, and how these might change over time. For colleges and universities to truly commit to the lifelong development of our students, consideration ought to be paid to the changing import and meaning of intellectual activities, including reading. And finally, help students see that the pleasure of radical absorption awaits them—at any age.

Daniel Regan is a sociologist and the retired dean of academic affairs at Johnson State College, now Northern Vermont University-Johnson.

Daniel Regan: Climate-change denial and the limits of higher education

Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org):

Last year, I attended my 50th reunion at Amherst College, in Amherst, Mass.. One evening at dinner under a tent, a former roommate, “Nick,” dominated the conversation with assertions that claims about human-induced climate change were a hoax and those about global warming a fraud. At first, I thought he was trying to be entertaining—or provocative.

But after a while, I realized my error. His was no parlor game; nor was he merely pushing his dinner partners by challenging the basis for their own strongly held convictions. He was a climate-change denier and a true believer when it came to denialism.

Since that dinner, I have wondered: How could an Amherst graduate arrive at these conclusions in the face of overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus? Similar questions could be asked of graduates from colleges and universities across the nation. Had the lessons of rigorous thinking, widespread reading, respect for evidence and trustworthy sources been lost on Nick? He had been, as I recalled, a brilliant student. So the answer was not, simply, that a college education had failed somehow to “take.”

On the contrary. He had fully internalized the critical thinking skills at a premium in his college days, but placed them now in the service of climate-change denialism. His lengthy enumeration of purported holes in the evidence was skillful. Indeed, it was strongly reminiscent of Big Tobacco’s methodological arguments in the highly orchestrated, sophisticated and clever campaign to fend off and postpone the inevitable declaration of tobacco as a carcinogen.

Nick was more a product of his regional background—in a hotbed of skepticism about human-induced climate change—than a product of Amherst. He was more a member of that region’s upper-class—its social networks, media preferences and economic interests—than of the Amherst class of ’66.

A higher education—what our college and university students learn both inside and beyond their classrooms—emerges as one of multiple influences but maybe not the most important one. A striking example of this hierarchy of influences emerges in a series of voting studies conducted in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Not very long after the war’s conclusion, sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset and political scientist Everett Carll Ladd Jr. produced a small avalanche of studies examining the voting patterns and preferences of 1960s college students.

Within a decade, the researchers were able to document shifts in students’ political orientations. Those who came from more liberal or radical backgrounds remained on the left. Those who came from more conservative or centrist backgrounds shifted rightward. The collegiate generation that had seemed so univocal was, in fact, increasingly divided.

Lipset and Ladd found that family background was a key factor in explaining the resulting voting patterns and ideological preferences. Although colleges and universities in the 1960s were viewed as possibly permanent bastions of liberalism, the generational shift to the left may have left its mark upon the lifestyles of those on campus, but did not necessarily leave a lasting impact upon their politics.

There was little chance that a higher education could compete with Nick's social background and current circumstances in influencing his eventual stance of climate change. His higher education was important, just not all-important.

The distinction should be both humbling and liberating. It can allow faculty, staff and administrators to take a deep breath, relax a little and adopt a spirit of what I would call well-considered but “playful experimentalism.” Such an ethos is sorely needed to spur much-needed innovation in higher education. This means risk: trying out that new advising model; experimenting with a novel course format and set of exercises, even though the tried and true ones have served well enough; trying out a new orientation for students at risk; collaborating in untested ways with a sister institution, and so on, through every level of the institu

But paralysis has its own perils in today’s more challenging environment for higher education. Thoughtful experimentation, despite the risks, is by far the wiser strategy for today's higher educators.

Daniel Regan is accreditation liaison officer and former dean of academic affairs at Johnson State College, in Vermont.