Casey Boyle argues in his article “…something like a reading ethics…” that there are fundamental flaws in the way that schoolchildren are taught to read through academic texts. Specifically, people are taught to read “in only one moment of our lives with only one type of material and in only one way” (Boyle), that being, in the way that novels are read; from first page to last, in sequential order. This insistence of only one form of reading invariably leads to two problems: moral and ethical. The moral problem arises when people are dissuaded from continuing to read a cumbersome book and subsequently feel ashamed: in Boyle’s words, “reading is born as a moral practice, one that good girls and good boys did well and completely and aloud for all to hear”(ibid.). It is ingrained in us that reading in this particular way is the only moral way to read any text, with any deviation from this norm being considered cheating. The ethical problem lies in that the way one ought to read an analytic text differs from the way people are taught to read. Boyle suggests that we ought to read non-literary texts in the same way that one reads a dictionary: “situationally and productively” (ibid.). He encourages this style of reading in his class by intentionally requiring too much reading for any student to reasonably be able to handle in such a short period of time. Therefore, students naturally learn to spot the key points of an academic text, rather than waste reading every line meticulously.
Boyle offers a six-step solution for how to efficiently read an academic text. Step one encourages the reader to sum up the purpose of the entire paper in a single sentence, while step two entails a short response. Steps three and four detail the key points of the paper and the sources used to support them, respectively. Step five and six encourage the reader to ask questions about specific points made in the paper, and speculate the response the author would have.
With these steps, Boyle argues, readers can learn to read in a different way, one that is more suitable for academic texts.
Source:
Boyle, Casey. “READING AS A MORAL PROBLEM.” Casey Boyle, 16 Jan. 2016, caseyboyle.net/2016/01/16/something-like-a-reading-ethics/.
