This one is a classic. The suggestion has been languishing on Feedbear, so go give it some love:
And from a Christian perspective:
Up voted Sire's book.
Agreed, 'How to Read a Book' is excellent and highly recommended. Voted for the other two as well.
Excellent choices! 👍😁👌
These are great resources. I would like to know if anyone has thoughts on resources for critical thinking and comprehension of biblical texts.
Sorry for the late reply Christian, I'd recommend these two resources. https://www.logos.com/product/137295/how-to-understand-and-apply-the-old-and-new-testaments
resources for critical thinking
Critical Thinking & Logic Mastery - 3 Books In 1: How To Make Smarter Decisions, Conquer Logical Fallacies And Sharpen Your Thinking
Elements of Critical Thinking: A Fundamental Guide to Effective Decision Making, Deep Analysis, Intelligent Reasoning, and Independent Thinking (on sale on Kindle for $5 right now)
Or one in Logos
Come Let Us Reason | Logos Bible Software
voted
mm.
This one is a classic. The suggestion has been languishing on Feedbear, so go give it some love: How to Read a Book (by Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Doren) Someone else suggested it too: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading And from a Christian perspective: How to Read Slowly: Reading for Comprehension (by James W. Sire)
My aunt used to take me to the annual New Orleans Symphony Book Fair ever since I was a kid. I remember going while in high school after years of not attending, and I came across of copy of "How to Read a Book". I said to the guy browsing next to me, "I have this...it's really good." He looked over and said in pure deadpan, "I know how to read a book." I just chuckled to myself and muttered, "You so obviously don't." Dunning-Kruger before DK was a thing.
Along the same line are some books by S.I. Hayakawa, such as Language in Thought and Action, and The Use and Misuse of Language. I had and read all of these in high school. They're currently in storage, but I hope to get them and bring them home soon. They are in the oldies-but-goodies category, as well as part of my selection of "meta-cognitive process" resources.
As teenager, my school was 5 minutes walking distance away. Therefore I could go home for the lunch and come back, the school bell rang at 11:15. On Tuesdays, the postman brought the Donald Duck comics magazine at 11:10. Then I had five minutes to read the magazine and then run to the school.
The problem was that after the school I had to read it again. Actually I am still doing something similar: reading/skimming a book fast and then reading the book or part of it slowly. Is that sort of habit recommended?
I came across of copy of "How to Read a Book". I said to the guy browsing next to me, "I have this...it's really good." He looked over and said in pure deadpan, "I know how to read a book." I just chuckled to myself and muttered, "You so obviously don't." Dunning-Kruger before DK was a thing.
I've joked, "How can I even read that and learn if I don't know how to read a book yet?" [;)]
As teenager, my school was 5 minutes walking distance away. Therefore I could go home for the lunch and come back, the school bell rang at 11:15. On Tuesdays, the postman brought the Donald Duck comics magazine at 11:10. Then I had five minutes to read the magazine and then run to the school. The problem was that after the school I had to read it again. Actually I am still doing something similar: reading/skimming a book fast and then reading the book or part of it slowly. Is that sort of habit recommended?
Funny, I was just having a conversation with myself about this...and "yes", I recommend that (talking to yourself--and answering, too!), as well as what you are already doing. I am a Special Education teacher by profession and training. When I was teaching, I used to use words that I knew my kids had never used or probably even heard before, but when I did, I would always follow up with an explanation of what the word meant by giving an example or an alternate, simpler definition. Often, I would use the term multiple times in conversation so that they would get used to hearing it (audibly) and hearing it in context.
Pretty much every year I taught, I had a principal, vice principal, tenured teacher, or college advisor come into my class for observations. Almost without fail, when I got my evaluation, there would be a comment about my use of "inappropriate" vocabulary with my students of "limited capacity". I was guilty of using words that were "over their heads". In other words, they were bugged by the fact I didn't "talk down" to my students. My logic was basically this: the kids might have been present on occasion when some of these words were used, but because they weren't being directly confronted with them, the words passed them by with no hint of connection. When I forced them to cognitively engage these words and their meanings, even if it was just a brief encounter, they would get an imprint of the engagement, with the word etched into the bark of a tree somewhere in the overgrown jungles of their minds, but it would be there, nonetheless. Perhaps they would never pass that way again, but if they did, it would be there.
I had noticed, as an adult, that on those rare occasions where I encountered an unfamiliar word, it seemed that more often than not, I would re-encounter that word again in a separate context, usually with 24 hours or just a couple of days. Was this reoccurring phenomenon just a flash of synchronicity and serendipitous luck? Or was it the case that the word was being used around me in fast-paced settings (television interviews, presentations, conversations, etc.), but due to my unfamiliarity with it, I was letting the unfamiliar pass by unengaged and unexplored, and thus it wasn't being recognized and absorbed? My guess was the latter, and I got repeated confirmations of that assumption over the years.
My operating principle within my classroom was to create a constant stream of "introductions" to words and concepts that my kids likely had never encountered, knowing that some amount of those contacts "wouldn't take", but that some, more than many would expect, would. In the parlance of folks in our particular Bible subculture, I was "planting seeds" in the hope and expectation that some of them would get watered and take root. By deliberately providing an initial explicit contact, I was providing them the experiences that would allow them at a later point to say, "Hey...I've heard that before!" It's ultra hard to overestimate the importance that the sense of "previous contact" has in generating confidence in a student. To switch the analogy, I was driving the pegs that would allow them to later have something upon which they could "hang" their future encounters with the word. In my experience, this procedural phenomenon isn't nearly as well appreciated and utilized as it ought to be, even if people "think" they are familiar with the concept, and the constant procession of degreed professionals who seemed utterly incapable of recognizing the value of, or the reason for, my practice in the classroom seems to prove that point.
A couple of anecdotes to illustrate the point...
I had a guy who was a senior who had a very low IQ (55-65, iirc). I had him for a number of classes, but during his final semester, I was tasked with teaching him social studies/history. I focused on trying to convey the ideas of "what and why" that led to the formation of the country. I spent some time on the French and Indian War, where I talked a bit about how George Washington's experience during that war convinced him that Providence had a special task for him (in particular, how at the end of a particular battle, he realized that 2-3 musket balls had passed through his clothes even though he had nary a scratch on him), and how his decision on multiple occasions to not take an authoritarian tack had set the stage for the both the establishment of our democracy and the idea of a peaceful transfer of power--the country could have easily become known as Washingtonia. We watched Last of the Mohicans, and we talked about the various grievances that the colonists had with England. He mostly listened during the semester, occasionally asking a question or two. Now, most of the same "professionals" who had graded my performance in times prior would have likely questioned why I was wasting time teaching "theory" to a kid who simply couldn't comprehend anything on that level or scale. Of course, that means that he was thereby destined to be perpetually faced with educational opportunities that never rose above the description, "duller than dirt". Anyway, every senior was required to take a final test that would determine whether they were to be awarded a high school diploma, or a "certificate of attendance". There was no doubt what the outcome was to be for this guy, but on the day he took the test, he came into my class beaming like I had never seen of him before. "Mr. Paul!! On that test, they had a question about the French and Indian war...and I KNEW that answer! I KNEW that answer!!!" Given his pride at having that single success, I expect that over time, his primary recollection of his twelve-year schooling encounter was going to be that unique experience of having successfully answered a single grade-level question on that final test. And most of the teachers he'd had in his whole career would have never bothered presenting him with material that was "over his head".
The last year I was in a classroom, I was teaching HS students. I had a resource class, which was where I helped my kids keep up with their assignments in their regular classes. That same year, I finally got around to wearing tsiytsitth (the "tassels" mentioned in Num. 15:38-40), and the first day I showed up with them on, my students obviously asked me what they were. I told them that the Bible says you should wear them to remind you to keep the commandments. It's possible one of them asked me to repeat the name for them, and we moved on. Months later, I was conducting IEP meetings at the end of the school year to evaluate each student's progress made and also set goals to achieve for the coming year. At the end of one of the meetings, as I stood up from the table, the female student's mother said, "Excuse me, sir. I was wondering what those are." Before I could give an explanation, her daughter chimed in. "They're tseetseets!"...which is how most people pronounce it. I immediately recalled how incessantly I was told by my "betters" that it was inappropriate bordering on malfeasant for me to introduce unfamiliar ENGLISH words to my classes (in fact, that same evaluation had been made against me for an earlier observation conducted a few weeks earlier in that very same resource class), because such words were so obviously "above their level", and here this girl had recalled the HEBREW name for my strings when it was mentioned at most twice in a conversation that lasted no more than 15-20 seconds over five months earlier. I also want to draw attention to how genuinely excited she was just to be able to provide the answer to that simple question.
My point is...you should DEFINITELY continue to utilize the habit you described, where you begin your studies by, as I described above, "driving a peg" upon which you can return later and begin to hang your increasingly developed understandings of the topics you are investigating. The "seed planting" and "peg driving" works for kids who are often conditioned to hate the educational process by bumblers who fancy themselves teachers, so you should expect it to work even that much more for adults like yourself, who are energetically and internally motivated to learn unfamiliar material. It is fundamentally more difficult to try to comprehend contextual interrelations at the same time you are being introduced to new terms and vocabulary. Having a "first go" at new material to establish a first contact experience with the terminology is a great way to "prime the pump", allowing your subsequent forays to reduce the number of balls you have to juggle and increase your likelihood of successfully extracting quality understanding from the material. Your practice, which you called a "habit", no doubt already confirms to you your inclination to rely on this process to acquire new information and knowledge. You are doing exactly as you ought. Other processes could also work in conjunction with your currently used procedures to help supplement your study process, but your current practice is 100% legit.
I came across of copy of "How to Read a Book". I said to the guy browsing next to me, "I have this...it's really good." He looked over and said in pure deadpan, "I know how to read a book." I just chuckled to myself and muttered, "You so obviously don't." Dunning-Kruger before DK was a thing. I've joked, "How can I even read that and learn if I don't know how to read a book yet?"
I've joked, "How can I even read that and learn if I don't know how to read a book yet?"
Classic chicken/egg scenario...not unlike the incident in the Garden. How can A&E be considered to have failed to do good and to have performed evil if they can't possibly be aware that their actions are either "good" or "evil" until they have eaten of the fruit? You might be able to say "performance and awareness are different criteria", which is true enough...but you CAN'T say "they should have known" something they couldn't have known and were definitionally incapable of comprehending, particularly if your intent (for whatever inexplicable reason) is to describe their performance/actions as "evil". They may have done wrong, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to say that they KNEW they were doing wrong...unless you are willing to say YHWH misnamed and misattributed the tree He planted.
For clarity, it's "you" 2p plural that I'm referencing.
