Readers Write
Essay 5/23/14: Thinking Critically, Being Absorbed
Note:
Carol Lauhon's name was misspelled in last week's READERS WRITE section.
Mark Bendure, Grosse Pointe Park, MI:
I share your view that both critical thinking and absorption are necessary. I would not have been so impressed with the importance of absorption until the Pythagorean Theorem played a prominent role in an airplane crash case I tried. My greatest lament about the current trend in education is that critical thinking seems to have gone by the wayside, at least at early levels where the focus is on the almighty MEAP scores that reward successful regurgitation of absorbed factoids (as an aside, I was told of a school district that led the State in scoring two consecutive years and receivd a demerit the second for failing to satisfy the "improvement" criterion). Even absorption has lost its importance now that computers and cell phones are available to provide a ready answer to virtually any question that earlier generations were required to absorb. (Any bets on how many modern 6th graders can do long division competently?) While those gadgets are truly awesome, I worry about the future of our democracy in a world where students may neither have absorbed such subjects as history nor learned how to critically analyze those events and avoid repeating past mistakes. Glad that I have a fellow curmudgeon to grouse with.
Blayney Colmore, Jacksonville, VT: Your new photo and your recounting of your fierce pedagogy make me look forward to reading your memoir. I was a poor student until a history teacher my sophomore year in high school awakened something in me that alerted me to school as something other than the equivalent of adults who had been required to sit on ice cakes, requiring the same of their children. I am grateful for nothing more than having been equipped for lifelong learning, which, during the past 50 years, has made life more fun and interesting than I ever imagined. I don't think it's much about IQ, but it does help to have vast parts of reality taking place in your head.
Nicholas S. Molinari, Brick, NJ:
Sorry, I'm forced to employ "awesome" to describe the power of your memory. I'm reminded of your dissertation about the Hebrew word meaning "to remember." Another personal and powerful essay! Thank you.
Rt. Rev. Alden M. Hathway, Dataw, SC:
Though we stand on opposite shores of the great divide intellectual that sets us at odds church and society, the culture wars, I so honor you and your writing. You always help me to think through my poor efforts to make sense of the biblical witness and the faith that I am called to proclaim. Over the years I enjoy thinking about our relationship, when we were young clergy together in Detroit in the '60s. And lately through this teaching site of yours. Especially am I moved by your essays describing your personal life and formation. On surface we are formed alike, we both grew up in the same era: the great war; the social tumult of the sixties; Vietnam and the Age of Aquarius; the great liberations, race, gender sexuality; And the station events of life, marriage, children, professional church career. But at the middle ground we part company; the conservative-liberal split. However you want to describe the ideological pathways we have chosen to follow. And now at the summit of our years; age and physical infirmities leveling our perspectives to the great questions that can never be answered fully yet define our souls, we are brothers along the way, the paths that inevitably converge. Thank you for your personal reminiscences: your family, your teachers, the reading that shaped your mind and thinking. And your station master friend who involved you in the Pere Marquette line. Its trains stopped at Interlochen (134 KN). I remember as a 10-year-old homesick boy the overnight train to summer camp there.
Barbara Sorlie, West Bend, WI: Thank you for all your interesting and informative essays. Over the years I have shared them with ministers, book and discussion groups, and other friends. I have read all of your books, and your books are on the same shelf along with books by Spong, Crossan, Borg, Weatherhead, Ehrman, Armstrong, Funk, Geering, Cupitt -- all having an impact on my understanding of scholarly and liberal interpretations of Christianity, the Bible and Jesus. Live long, Harry Cook. Live well.
Barby Reider, West Bloomfield, MI:
Enjoy your article so much.
Cynthia Chase, Laurel, MD:
I don't think I began to think critically until middle age. My husband says that when he first met me, I seemed to be looking for an authority figure, but that later I abandoned that quest. As a child, with my own library card and a library within walking distance, I read all kinds of books, including every available Nancy Drew book. Being a child of the '40s, I had no idea what a "roadster" (Nancy's car) looked like. When I was 12, my grandmother gave me a beautifully illustrated edition of Little Women. How I loved that book. I still revisit favorite chapters occasionally.
Euni Rose, Southfield, MI:
A pox on those who didn't see the "you" when you were a fat kid with his nose in a book.
Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:
Thinking critically did not come naturally to me. It came from exposure to some hard schoolmasters who demanded nothing less. The absorption in subjects of interest, from magic as a boy to American history in college, came easily. You are right that it is the combination of the two that creates a scholar or a well-informed person. I, too, have always enjoyed memorizing favorite writings, from the Gettysburg Address and The Cremation of Sam McGee when I was young, to On First looking into Chapman's Homer and La Marseillaise (in French) when I was older. Although my notebook of contemporary quotes keeps growing, I fail to find anything to memorize, nothing, certainly, that could rival your quote from The Tempest (or anything else Shakespeare wrote.)
Frieda Kunzel, Cincinnati. OH: Would love to have been one of your teachers. You sound like the student we teachers dreamed of having. I don't know how teachers do it today. Thank you for your stimulating essays. Keep them coming.
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