Reading is Totally Overrated
On a lot of occasions I’ve heard someone say “Yeah I really need to read more.” My response to this has never been much more than “ah okay” but that has now changed to “No you don’t.”
Regardless of the hundreds of scientific studies that most likely will say “WHAT?!” to this, reading a book does not make you smarter. Reading, as does many other things, stimulates the mind. If a person reads a lot well then they likely get better at reading. I guess by this argument you could say, “Well hah, reading does make you smarter shut up already”, but I’d say that doing anything over a prolonged period of time causes you to generally get better at that activity. Extensively playing a video game will make you better at that video game. Coupled with an increased chance of obesity it will probably also help you adapt faster to newer video games because you are subconsciously mastering the art of using the controller. Why should learning how to play video games better be looked upon in any lesser light than say… learning how to consume text faster so you can read the latest Harry Potter book quicker?
Just like anything it’s how we apply it. If you’re reading a plethora of fun fiction books to increase your reading ability to some day delve into the world of nonfiction in the hopes of learning great things, you could be on to something. But it seems as though many people feel that if they read three or four books a year they’re really contributing to their brain in some dramatic “I need to do this more often” way. If the feeling alone that you’re getting smarter because you’re reading is adequate enough then maybe you should just do it. I know a lot of people who think they’re brilliant though and it’s just not true.
Most people are probably wasting their time with books. Watch the movie version because you’re probably a slow reader anyway. Take the time you saved and go do something that will engage you differently. Everyone learns in a variety of ways and for many that self improvement does not come from reading a book. I’ll blame that one on the school system for having such a shitty way of immersing us in the world of books in the first place.
I love to read now. I like fiction, nonfiction, news articles which are really a toss up for what category they fall under… Just about anything other than dumb blog posts on the internet are worth my time to read. I consider myself lucky though that I was able to get to the point where I enjoy books. The problem I faced through school was it was their primary job that I learned to read, second job, understand that books are boring.
Growing up we were always assigned these mostly dry incredibly dull books. Okay, maybe they were just dull for me. The Teachers would tout them as incredible or great, something we really should experience. Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, whatever. Give me a break. I’m a young teen, I don’t want some deep thought provoking book I need stimulation. If this is what a great book is then I don’t want part of it. You want kids to grasp that books can relate to them or be more exciting? Have them read Twilight for required reading. The overreaching goal here should not be to have kids learn classics and understand quality literature but to have them learn that books can be good. As kids we are some what impressionable and being told “This is a good book” and then not liking it, to me meant “Well it probably is a good book, but I just don’t like to read because books are boring.”
Once a taste for reading is developed you can move on to less interesting, more thought provoking, literature without inducing extreme hatred for the activity.
Folks that have been sticking their faces in books since breast feeding and have never stopped since often to me have this elitist attitude that the stuff we read in those days was good, you just didn’t understand them. Not true, those people are just boring and can appreciate a dry book more than others. Anyone that believes that most teenagers should appreciate classic literature, or classic anything for that matter is a ignorant and probably quite a douche. Yes this is brilliant, take a culture that is trying to figure out its own identity and force them to do things their parents like. What a super idea it’s strange more people don’t like reading.
Enough digression into why we don’t read; none of that matters though because, again, reading does not make you smarter. Or how about this, the act of reading does not make you smarter than some other activity if that’s not how your mind has been conditioned to learn. If you’re not already an avid reader and your desire to become one revolves around the idea that you will some how become more worldly just forget it. Take a college class, watch the history channel, find some other outlet to enhance your skills. We learn a lot more from doing than we do from anything we’ll read anyway.
