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The Well Educated Mind We all read for a variety of reasons.

The reasons may change with our age, our interests, our occupations and the literature we read. For most people, the basic reason for reading is probably entertainment. We read literature mostly because we enjoy it. We often enjoy the sense of adventure reading brings. Reading for pleasure may take various forms. We may read just to pass the time. Or, we may want to escape the four walls that usually surround us or sometimes we want to escape from ourselves. Reading whisks us away from ourselves into the worlds of other people or imagination. We often read for the information and knowledge. We find pleasure in learning about life on the worlds great mountains or along its mighty rivers. We find possible solutions to our challenges when we meet people in books whose situations are similar to our own. Through literature, we sometimes understand situations we could not otherwise understand in real life. We can become better people through being aware of what we read. We sometimes read simply for the enjoyment we get from the arrangement of words. Some people read to improve their skills and ability to relate to others, making them better leaders. The great authors are superb craftsmen. They write books packed with meaning. Their characters often have broad human values. The values are not limited to one place or to one period of time. The characters seem to be real persons who face real challenges. They express feelings that people anywhere might have at any time. Many books express lasting truths and show the authors writing skill. The Classics Connect Us to Those Who Share the Stories Each culture is different because it has different shared stories. Different stories define each family, each religion, each nation. And members of each connect themselves with the storiesthey make the stories part of their personal story. Can you imagine the Jews without the stories of Moses, the Maccabees, or the Holocaust? Or Americans without stories of Paul Revere, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln? Learn the stories of a culture, and you will come to understand that culture. That is one reason why it is such a tragedy that the current generation of American youth are mostly growing up without the stories of the Declaration of Independence, Daniel in the Lions Den, Patrick Henry, Sitting Bull or Daniel Webster. The classics are the ark, the preserver, of stories which unite the cultures and the generations. What are the stories of todays culture. What meaning do they portray. In addition to cultural, national and family stories, we each have individual stories. We all have a personal canon, a set of stories which we hang onto and believe in and base our lives around; and great classics are the best cannon. A canon is the set of books we consider to be the standard of truth. Since the purpose of reading, of gaining education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. It is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. We will not rise above the beliefs portrayed in the books we read, the movies and television that we watch. Our canon is part of us, deeply sub-consciously. The characters, principles and teachings in our canon shape our charactergood, evil, mediocre, or great.

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Our Cannon Becomes our Plot or Life Story. There are four types of stories: bent, broken, whole, and healing. A. Bent stories portray evil as good, and good as evil. Such stories are meant to enhance the evil tendencies of the reader, such as pornography and many horror books and movies. The best decision regarding Bent stories is to avoid them like the plague. Broken stories portray evil as evil and good as good, but evil wins. Something is broken, not right, in need of fixing. Such books are not uplifting, but can be very inspiring. Broken stories can be very good for the reader if they motivate him or her to heal them, to fix them. The Communist Manifesto is a broken classic; so are The Lord of the Flies and 1984. In each of these, evil wins; but they can be very motivating to because people often have felt a real need to help reverse their messages in the real world. Whole stories are where good is good and good wins. Most of the classics are in this category. Readers should spend most of their time in such works. Healing stories can be either Whole or Broken stories where the reader is profoundly moved, changed, and significantly improved by his reading experience.

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Following is a recommendation for the reader who wishes to come face-to-face with greatness through the classics: Avoid Bent stories. Develop a personal canon of Healing stories. Spend the majority of your studies in Whole works, but dont neglect Broken stories that you ought to be fixing. It is okay to have some entertainment also. Just remember you become what you read. Your beliefs (which drive your behaviors) are highly influenced by what you read. The Classics Teach us Human Nature A knowledge of human nature is the key to leadership. There are four basic instincts which all humans have: 1. 2. 3. 4. Survival, security and a sense of personal control. A sense of self. A desire for relationships, connectedness, social mobility. A sense of being connected. Adventure, excitement. A sense of challenge. To gain meaning, to know self, truth and God. A sense of belonging to something bigger.

The classics give us a glimpse into each of these basic instincts. In fact, the thing which makes a classic great is glaring insight into basic human nature. Ultimately, as you study the classics, you learn about your own personal nature. Learning through experience is good, but often it is better to learn from someone elses experiences and build on them. If we will let them, the classics can teach us lessons without the pain of repeating certain mistakes ourselves. They can show us correct choices which will get us where we want to go.
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We will certainly get our own share of challenging experiences, but learning from others can help us immeasurably on our journey. Classics allow us to experience, in an intimate way, the greatest mistakes and successful choices of human history. If we learn from these mistakes and successes, we will make fewer mistakes and have more successes. And at a deeper level, knowing how others think, feel and act allows us to predict behavior and lead accordingly. We can develop empathy, compassion, wisdom and self-discipline without subjecting our relationships to the learning curve. The Classics Bring us Face-to-Face with Greatness The purpose of studying literature is to become better. First, as we read we experience despair, heartache, tragedyand we learn to recognize what causes them and avoid it in our own lives. As we study the characters, real or fictional, in the classics, we are inspired by greatness, which is the first step to becoming great ourselves. Who we are changes as we set higher and higher standards of what life is about and what we are here to accomplish. The Classics Take us to the Frontier to be Conquered All generations before this one have had geographical frontiers to conquer. We dont. And without a frontier we cannot become what the founders, the explorers and the pioneers became in their extremities. Our challenges define us, our reactions to them mold and shape us. Human beings need a frontier in order to progress. Fortunately we do have one frontier left, and it is in fact the hardest one. It is the frontier within. In all of history, this frontier has not been fully conquered. The most challenging struggles of life are internal. We as a world are lousy at relationshipsand the classics can help. The classics deal with the real questions of life, our deepest concerns: joy, pain, fear, love, hate, courage, anger, death, faith. These issues are reality; they are eternal and more lasting than jobs, careers, school, material things. In the classics we can often experience other peoples character more powerfully than in real life because the author lets us see their thoughts, feelings and reasons for and consequences of their choices (which we hardly ever see in others, and often not even in ourselves). Our goal in life is to become truly good, really happy. The classics help us see that quest in others and how their choices fail or succeed. A by-product of this rapport is the erasure of prejudices and illfounded biases that divide and factionalize us form others. Classics help us connect with individuals whatever their race, creed, age, culture and even place in history. Modernity has come to mean ignoring what is important because we are too busy with what is immediate. The classics are a remedy and can be a cure. They force us to turn off the TV and computer, to quietly study for hours and hoursreading, pondering, thinking, asking, crying, laughing, struggling, and above all, feeling, changing, becoming. And then, because we are better, we must go out and serve.

The Classics Force us to Think First we are caused to think about the characters in the story, then about ourselves, then about people we know and finally about humanity in general. At first reading the classics can be a
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chore, an assignment. If we persist, it eventually becomes entertainment. Then one day (after a few weeks for some, perhaps years for another) something clicks; all the exposure to greatness reaches critical mass and you the reader, awaken. Your exposure to greatness changes you. Your ideas are bigger, your dreams wilder, your plans more challenging, your faith more powerful. The classics can be hard work, and that is exactly what is needed to learn to think. Thinking is hard; deep thinking is not entertaining or easy. Thinking is like exercise, it requires consistency and rigor. Like barbells in a weightlifting room, the classics force us to either put them down or exert our minds. They require us to think. And not just in a rote memory way. The classics make us struggle, search, ponder, seek, analyze, discover, decide, and reconsider. And, as with physical exercises, the exertion leads to pleasing result as we metamorphose and experience the pleasure of doing something wholesome and difficult that changes us for the better. Reading Critically If you what to get more than entertainment out of a book you should ask whether it will lead you along a path whose end is different from its beginning, whether its characters have motivations and ambitions and hangups that are recognizably human, and whether those motivations and ambitions and hangups give rise to the novels crisis and situations. Inquiry Reading (Getting the facts) When reading commit yourself to stop at the end of each chapter (or substantial section) and jot down a few sentences in your reading journal. These sentences should summarize the chapters contents, main assertions, the most important events and what you have learned. If you read with the intention to make a summary you will focus better on what you are reading. When you find your mind drifting, gently bring yourself back to the words knowing that you will write a summary. A chapter generally has one theme or one idea that the author wants to develop and wants you to understand. As you read, do jot down questions that come to your mind. Record your reactions, questions, thoughts, disagreements or agreements with the writer, with what is happening in the book. Indicate sections to be reread and the questions you have. Scribble down any ideas, phrases, or sentences that strike you, reflections or connected thoughts that the book brings to your mind. These questions, disagreements, and reflection should be visually distinct from your summary of the books contents. It is important to note page numbers beside your comments. Leave very wide margins on either side of your paragraphs for making comments later. It is helpful to keep a list of characters as you read, their names, their positions, and their relationships to each other; maybe a genealogical table. Looking up words that you do not know is also very important. Knowing the word can change the whole context and meaning of a paragraph. After reading the book, the chapter summaries will be an outline of the book. You will want to be able to answer the following questions: a. Who is(are) the central character(s) in this book? b. What is the books most important event? c. Is there some point in the book where the characters change?
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d. Glance back through the list of major events that youve jotted down for each chapter and try to identify the most central and life-changing of them all. Does something happen that makes everyone behave differently? e. Which character is most affected? The goal of at this stage of reading is to know what the author says. Logic-Stage Reading (Evaluating) Now you will want to ask: a. Why did the author write this book? b. What did he or she set out to do? i. layout facts, ii. convince you of the truth in a set of deductions, iii. give you an emotional experience, iv. present a dilemma to be faced? c. If you are reading nonfiction, you would now begin to analyze the writers argument: i. What idea is she trying to convince you of? ii. What evidence does he give you for believing this argument? iii. When you evaluate nonfiction you ask: Am I persuaded? d. But when you evaluate fiction you are invited to enter another world. You will ask: i. Am I transported? ii. Do I see, feel, hear this other world? iii. Can I sympathize with the people who live there? iv. Do I understand their wants and desires and problems? v. Or am I left unmoved? e. What does the central character (or characters) want? What is standing in his (or her) way? And what strategy does he (or she) pursue in order to overcome this block? f. Generally a deeper, more essential need or want lies beneath this surface desire. You can often get at this deeper motivation by asking the second question: Whats standing in the way? g. Is a person keeping the hero/ine from achieving his/her deepest wants? If so, is that person a villain in the sense, an evildoer who wishes to do another character harm? Or is the villain simply another character with a deep want of his/her own that happens to be at cross-purposes with the hero/iness need? h. The block in the heroines way doesnt have to be a person. A collection of circumstances, a malign force that constantly pushes her in the wrong direction, an impersonal set of events that have united to complicate her life-these can also keep a character from getting what she wants. The novelists world may demonstrate that human beings are always at the mercy of a flawed, fallen creationor an uncaring, mechanical universe in which they are as insignificant as flies. i. Once youve identified, at least tentatively, a characters wants and the block that keeps him from fulfilling them, you can begin to answer the third question: What strategy does the character follow in order to overcome the difficulties that stand in his way? Does he bulldoze his way through the opposition, using strength or wealth to overcome his difficulties? Does he manipulate, scheme, or plan? Does he exercise intelligence? Grit
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his teeth and keep on going? Buckle under the pressure, wilt and die? This strategy produces the plot of the novel. j. Characters have always longed for escape, freedom, an ideal existence, control of their lives. Some want to find the inherent meaning of life, not the meaning imposed on him by the corporations that have already constructed the story of his life for him. What keeps him from discovering this meaning? Does he manage to find it in the end? k. Where is the story set? l. Are there important images or metaphors? Rhetoric-Stage Reading (Forming your own opinion) The final stage of readingrhetoric-stage readinghas the following as its goal. Now you know what, why and how. The final question is: So What? What does this writer want me to do? What does this writer want me to believe? What does this writer want me to experience? Am I convinced that I must do, or believe, what the writer wants me to do or believe? Have I experienced what the writer wants me to experience? If not, why? Uninformed opinions are easy to come by. But thinking through someone elses argument, agreeing with it for specific, well-articulated reasons, or disagreeing with it because youre able to find holes in the writers argument, or because the writer left out facts which s/he should have considered and werentthat different. The rhetoric stage follows the logic stage for this very reason. The good reader bases his opinion on intelligent and analysis, not mere unthinking reaction. The journal is an excellent logic stage tool. But in the rhetoric stage of inquiry, you need something more. Rhetoric is the heart of clear, precise communication, and persuasion also involves two people. In your case, one of those people may be the books author: the book is communicating an idea to you, persuading you of something. But for you to articulate your own ideas clearly back to the book, you need to bring someone else into the process. The ideas to discuss in the rhetoric stage of novel reading have to do with the nature of human experience: What are people like? What guides and shapes them? Are we Free? If not what binds and restricts us? What is the ideal man or woman like? Is there such a thing as an ideal man or womanor does this idea itself suggest some sort of transcendent truth that is only an illusion? Do you sympathize with the characters? Which one(s), and why? Can you find some point of empathy (emotional or intellectual identification) with each major character? Do you like him/her? dislike? feel sorry for? pity? The characters dilemma, or their reaction to it, must provoke some kind of recognition; even in the oddest and most maniacal character, there should be something that we acknowledge. In a great novel, even the evildoers posses some emotion or motivation that also exists in the reader. The novels bad guy is a villain not because he is a monster, but because some real quality has been distorted and exaggerated until it turns destructive. In the same way, a heroine should not possess undiluted goodness; such a character would be unrecognizable. Her greatness should result from her triumph over flaws that we recognize, and might even share. If she fails to
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triumph, we should feel that her failure could be our own; were we in her shoes, we too might succumb. Try to identify the character quality that allows you to sympathize with each character. Do you feel this quality in yourself or observe it in others? In the novel, is this quality distorted, or exaggerated, or somehow twisted away from the norm? What opposing tendency destroys it, or stands in the way of its full flowering? Do you recognize that contrary impulse in yourself as well? What does the setting of the book tell you about the way human beings are shaped? Does the writers times affect him/her? (Gender bias, reflection of social customs.) Is there an argument in the book? What exactly is the writer telling you? The primary purpose of a novelist is to lead you through an experience, not to convince you of a point. But in many novels, there is an idea. The writer, in describing the life of one particular character, is making a statement about the human condition in general. Do you agree? Now you can as yourself that ultimate question: Is this work true? Does the experience create an emotion in you? Is it consistent with universal truths? Your core values? Or is it merely emotionally leading? Here you should consider two senses of the word true. A novel that is convincing, vivid, engaging, carefully written so that each detail corresponds to reality, a novel that draws you into its world and keeps you interested in the fates of its charactersthat novel is real, resonating with our own experience of the world. But a work can be true in this sense and still present an idea about what human experience should be that is opposite to our own convictions. Or a work can vividly portray one aspect of human existence while suggesting that this is the only level on which humans can live. Or a story can suggest that there is no should benothing to strive for beyond what we see, nothing to believe in beyond what is. All of these ideas we may strenuously rejected while still finding the book itself believable. So in what sense is the book true? Related to this is one final question: What is fiction meant to do? Why are you reading a novel at all? Are you expecting to find out some truth about human nature? Should a novel reveal some difficult, hard-to-face truth about ourselves? Do novels show the inevitable end of certain paths? Or are they, instead, agents of moral change? Do they show us models so that we can amend our ways? This ideathat fiction provides us with a modelitself has a certain assumption behind it: There is some standard of human behavior which applies to all of us, in all cultures, and our quest in life is to uncover it. The novel gives us a way to become aware of and explore our own beliefs through the lives of the storys characters and their dilemmas. If you want to develop your mind further the next step is to write your arguments, reactions and feelings about what you have read. This is another important part of communication. Being able to express your opinions in writing so others can understand them and respond to them is an important step in education and your ability to know your self (what life means to you, what you value, what moves you) as well as use reason and logic.

The Well Educated Mind To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about. To be informed is to collect facts; to be enlightened is to understand the idea (justice, or charity, or human freedom) and use it to make sense of the facts

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youve gathered. Technology can do a great deal to make information gathering easier, but it can do little to simplify the gathering of wisdom. Observation limits our learning to our immediate surroundings; conversation and attendance at lectures are valuable, but expose us only to the views of a few nearby persons. Reading alone allows us to reach out beyond the restrictions of time and space, to take part in the Great Conversation of ideas that began in ancient times and has continued unbroken to the present. The study of literature requires different skills than reading for pleasure. Simply reading isnt enough. We must learn to fix our minds, to organize our reading so that we are able to retain the skeleton of the ideas that pass in front of our eyes. We must not simply read, but meditate and study, an act that transfers and conveys the notions and sentiments of others to ourselves, so as to make them properly our own. To get more out of our reading it is important to organize reading around chronology and then ascertain what events were taking place in all other nations, at the same period of time. Use time lines and maps. We get more out of reading by keeping a journal to organize your thoughts about your reading. What we write, we remember. What we summarize in our own words becomes our own. The journal is the place where the reader records quotes, questions and thought or reactions, agreements and disagreements, then organizes it through a summary, written in the readers own words and then evaluates it through reflection and personal thought. As you read, you should follow this three-part process: jot down specific phrases, sentences, and paragraphs as you come across them; when he finished your reading, go back and write a brief summary about what youve learned; and then write your own reactions, questions, and thoughts. If you want to judge a novel, you should ask whether it will lead you along a path whose end is different from its beginning, whether its characters have motivations and ambitions and hangups that are recognizably human, and whether those motivations and ambitions and hangups give rise to the novels crisis and situations. The first time you read through a novel, answer three very simple questions: Who are these people? What happens to them? And how are they different afterwards? Uninformed opinions are easy to come by. But thinking through someone elses argument, agreeing with it for specific, well articulated reasons, or disagreeing with it because youre able to find holes in the writers argument, or because the writer left out to facts which he should have considered thats difficult. The critical reader bases his opinion on intelligence and analysis, not mere unthinking reaction.

These ideas where extracted from: The Well Educated Mind Susan Wise Bauer; A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century Oliver Van DeMille; and the World Book Encyclopedia.

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