Close Reading: Myopia as a Virtue
You are reading a text.
Yes. Right now.
Your eyes are scanning over symbols called letters. They are joined together into words and sentences and paragraphs to make up the total of this article.
Your brain is in the process of translating these symbols into sounds, meanings, concepts. And you are reacting to those concepts.
You’re having thoughts about what you’re reading. Maybe you’re reminded of a similar article you’ve read sometime in the past. Maybe you’re feeling a thrill of excitement at such an original introduction to an education article. Or perhaps you’re rolling your eyes and wondering why the author is such a doofus.
No matter how you look at it, reading involves complex processes. A whole bunch of stuff is going on to make it happen – all of it essential.
Yet when we evaluate reading comprehension these days, we put the focus squarely on one or two of those multifarious processes. It’s reductive, reactionary, and lame. It’s a dumbing down of the cognitive and metacognitive process. But it makes things easy to grade on a standardized test.
That’s what the fad of close reading is all about. It’s an attempt to make the mysterious and complex mind something that can easily be labeled right or wrong.
For the uninitiated, close reading is the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text in which great emphasis is put on individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold.
It’s not that close reading is unimportant. After all, it’s something good readers do. But an overemphasis on this aspect leaves out so much that is even more vital. It’s like saying the only significant part of the Hershey bar is the wrapper, or the only salient part of eating the Hershey bar is chewing. However, when I unwrap my dessert, there better be chocolate inside, and after I bite into it, I’d better not forget to swallow!
But education specialists with little to no actual classroom experience are making a Close Reading: Myopia as a Virtue | gadflyonthewallblog:
