A few days ago, I read something that caught my attention. The essence of the message was that reading is active. You must be alive and involved in the process. Contrast that kind of learning with watching a film or listening to a lecture, which may be inactive.
I just noticed in my library of thousands of books a 1990 Zondervan publication by one of my favorite people, Dr. Ben Carson, world famous pediatric surgeon of Johns Hopkins University Hospital, titled Gifted Hands. One of the turning points in the life of Ben Carson and his brother, Curtis, was when their non-reading mother insisted that her Detroit elementary public school sons read books and write book reports on them for her to check.
These boys began to read and soon
were no longer failing, but making good grades. We would all do better
if we were more active in the learning process. George B. Emerson,
American educator of the 19th century said, "If we encountered a man of
rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read."
