In my reading for this week, I was struck by how Roadville residents valued reading but hardly did any actual reading. I often heard that people prefer having been read to a actual reading because it’s better to have ready use of knowledge rather than go through the process of acquiring it.
When I was an undergraduate student, I off-handedly remarked to one of my advising professors that someday we would be able to upload books to our brain. He paused to consider what I had said, and I was completely shocked that he took me seriously. After some recollection, he said that he would hate to lose the joy out of sitting down and reading. I remember that he described his job, in a manner of speaking, as a professional reader.
Someone last week in class asked why do we do what we do? Many of us were silent, and many of us were very outspoken about why we don’t like what we do. It’s an important question that many of us pursuing academic work should ask ourselves again and again. Some days, I’m more confident than others about knowing why I do what I do, but after reading the chapter about Heath, it dawned on me that I enjoy reading, especially primary texts.
What I really like doing though is reading a text and then talking about it with other people. Like the people from Trackton—although they owned very few books—they traded ideas and debated interpretations in a group setting. Of course, relaxing with a good book on my own time is well and fine, but what we do is approach texts as a group and grapple with what they might mean. I initially thought that what they did in Trackton was very strange and unusual, and then I started thinking about it more carefully. It's not that unusual at all.
Talking about texts is rewarding in of itself. Writing about texts is also rewarding in of itself. However, it’s also useful for our students. While we can debate what materials to teach—those dead white men get much grief—I think what we like about our work is the community’s ability to keep reinterpreting texts.
