On Reading With an Open Mind

If you had asked my late grandmother what my strangest habit was as a child, she would have told you about the many times she caught me reading newspapers. She did not do much schooling and her reading was not the best. Still, she was smart enough to know that the language and the ideas that were expressed in a newspaper were not something an 8-year-old boy could comprehend. But there I was, reading newspapers and anything I could lay my hands on.

Reading has always been second nature to me. It’s something that I have always loved to do and I credit it largely for my writing skill. Today I regret that I don’t read with the same appetite with which I did between the ages of 12 and 20. Writing is an innate talent but reading other people’s works; books, novels, articles, essays, short stories are the things that helped to both expand and shape my vocabulary and to improve my writing ability.

But most importantly, all this reading shaped my state of mind and opened me to the world of ideas from which I draw inspiration to write all the articles I have been writing here on PoiseSocial. But the more I write articles here and read comments after, the more I realise that many people do not know how to read.

Don’t get me wrong. You know your ABCs and you know how to sound them out correctly when they are strung together, but when it comes to actually reading, many people are quite lost. Let me explain with an example.

Two days ago, Tino posted an article here talking entitled “6 Things You Need To Do To Make It In Cameroon.” A few people in the comment section said they did not read past the first point he made which is, that you need to learn French.

Those persons, are those who I say do not know how to read.

I decided to join PoiseSocial as a contributor because very much like Tino I was frustrated by the half-baked write-ups that many self-proclaimed bloggers passed off as content. I do not think of myself as a blogger. I like to think of myself as a social commentator. At least that is what I am when on PoiseSocial. When Tino, whom I had followed for a while, started PoiseSocial I offered to contribute after reading a good number of his articles for the simple reason that I had learned quite a lot.

If I write on PoiseSocial today, it is not to give my ideas on an issue, but rather to learn from our readers. I try to spark discussion with every article I write. I find it very irritating when I go to the comments section and I see that everyone agrees with the ideas that I have spelled out in my article.

I hate to think that I am right most of the time. Tino and I do not hold universal knowledge and that’s why sometimes when we go to the comment section and see someone say “this article is trash” without giving a single reason why they think so, we ask them to write something and send to us explaining their contrary opinion which we would post. Till date not one of them has taken up the challenge.

Again, those are people who do not know how to read.

The thing is this, people who do not know how to read are people who put their personal bias in front of everything that comes in front of them in writing. Many people approach an article here with a defensive state of mind because they saw something in the headline, caption, or picture, that put them in a defensive mode.

And so they read through an article, not to fully understand what I am writing about but rather to find points where they disagree with me. Sometimes they are so bent on disagreeing that when they find one divergent point, they then go straight to the comment section to call my article trash only for me to come and tell them that if they had read further down, they would have seen where I personally contradicted the point which they contradicted.

Crazy!

But to go back on Tino’s article from two days ago, one of our readers, a certain Williams Esther, said he stopped reading after point 1 which basically said we ought to learn French. My question now “why do you miss out on 5 points below which perhaps you can learn something valuable from just because you don’t agree with one point?”

Like I said in a reply to that comment that is what the white man calls “throwing the baby out with the bath water.” Basically throwing out many good ideas because you don’t agree with one.

Meanwhile, other people who did not necessarily agree with point 1 read through the whole article and then came to the comment section and had a healthy discussion about point 1. They went to bed that night wiser people.

And that is why we write for PoiseSocial. Not to form diktats, but to put our ideas out in the world so we can have a meaningful discussion. Knowing how to read involves putting aside your personal bias for a little while and absorbing the material in front of you. The material may be flawed, but you can learn from the good and from the bad.

I’ll end this article with a quote from a writer I admire so much and who, frankly, is the inspiration behind it.

“Most of us learn to read in school, and when we do, it’s for one of two reasons: to memorize or to critique—both with the intent of choosing right or wrong.

When we memorize out of a textbook, the goal is essentially to score well on tests. Similarly, when we critique something, say, our goal is to establish distinctions between what is right and what is wrong, and we have to ensure that everything we read fits into a predefined box so that we can make a strong case.

This works in school, and it teaches in its own way, but unfortunately, when reading in the real world, this kind of mind-set cheats us out of knowledge. That said, anytime you read something with the mindset that you are there to extract what is right and what is wrong, you are by default limiting how much you can get out of a particular piece of writing. You’re boxing an experience that has many dimensions into just two.

Reading isn’t about jumping at details. It’s about incorporating a perspective.”

- Wandji Wilfred