[Renewals: Reading in Slow Motion]

Caveat: Blogged Live

Plenary at the Renewals Conference

Professor Richard E. Miller - Rutgers University - Reading in Slow Motion: The Humanities and the Work of the Moment

(He begins by warning us of a technical glitch)

A technological change appeared at Rutgers and the teaching of writing which he fought tooth and claw

Credentials for technology: played games as a kid. His concern about the future of humanities is centrally focussed on the interface between people who are trained to work with words, and images, and the tech interfaces that now define our lives

The National Education Association Report "Reading at Risk" - lit. reading in the U.S. - attempt to study changing reading habits in the U.S: reading habits not cause for celebration, over the past 20 years, young adults (18-34) have declined from being those most likely to read lit. to those least likely.

Our target population are those who do not read

Says every single age group has declined in reading, i.e. not active readers (6 or more fiction "books") BUT does this study look at reading web pages, playing games, reading comics, texting, facebooking, etc...

Why the "precipitous decline"? - tv not at fault, rather the "internet very likely a cause of the decline". The greatest percentage of internet use are those who "formerly were most likely to be literary readers."

The only place that there's been growth in the U.S. is in creative writing - "nearly 30% growth in the number of adult creative writers." (does that include blogging?)

By 2075 no more literary reading.

"We are a nation of writers without a readership": this is a reality that we have to confront as teachers, nature of literacy, expression is being transformed before our eyes. What we know mean by composing is not that you have your own printing press but your own movie software etc...but who's watching it? There's a lot of stuff on youtube that has not viewers.

BUT: how do we understand this disjunction?

"Books remain the foundation of the humanities...its embodied, visceral..." even the most techy people he knows don't settle down with a book (he hasn't met my brother)

Maybe what's important about the humanties and reading is training to focus, how do you focus "in the age of distraction"? How do you get kids to turn off "all that noise" so that they can experience that simple humanizing effect of focusing their mind?

Maybe the growth of creative writers is merely the desire to feel creative?

He wants to celebrate "amateur" readers - if his students can only take one thing away with them after class, it's the desire to feel creative (not take Middlemarch away with them though he wishes this were the case)



Miller goes on to talk about requirements of education:
to go into business - no title, not time for degree (says it's not necessary)
to declare oneself a poet, painter, writer, etc... no title and no need for a degree (uses example of Stephen King)
to become a lawyer - 3 years, then bar exam
to become a doctor - 4 years then internship, residency
an English prof - average ages of grad. 37, 11.3 years of study and then? - why does it take that long? Is that "that" hard?

People are stalled. How do we get "passion" back? Why does it matter? It matters to me and I'm going to convey to you why it matters. It's human to "make a connection."

On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry:
"What is the felt experience of cognition at the moment one stands in the presence of a beautiful boy or flower or bird?"


We need to spend time with ideas we don't agree with - this is what the humanities are good for - ambivalence, ambiguity, a state of mind that acknowledges the complexity of the world (I'll remember that one - I'm very complex)

If your only way of joining thoughts is through the word "and" you don't really *think*, you need a conjunction: *BUT* - if you cannot qualify your thought you're not really an academic.

Miller looked at all the references Scarry made in her first three pages, read slowly, make connections. He made a collage of Scarry's references - what a great idea to use in all learning environments.



TIP: Slow down, pay attention, then ideas come.


[Producing "mineable information" - role of universities]