A Non-Course on Learning-to-Learn and Developing a Personal Philosophy: The Reading Habit/A Reading List

About 15 years ago I wrote a post called The Reading Habit. One aim of the non-course is to develop that firmly in the students. To determine whether you already have the reading habit, ask yourself about how you spend your leisure time. Is reading a significant part of that? Or is it taken up entirely with watching movies/TV, playing video games, and hanging out with friends? And then, you need to ask about what you are reading. I wouldn't count text messages, Tweets, emails, or other short form writing online. The focus here is on longer form writing, especially writing that has been published, which screens out works that are not of sufficiently high quality, so you eventually develop a taste for what good writing is like.

More recently I wrote a post, A Summer Camp for Teaching College-Level Reading and Learning to Learn, which has essentially the same goals as the non-course but was meant to happen face to face, and would be quite resource intensive to deliver. You might get some ideas about how you should proceed with the non-course from reading that post. But the hope that some benevolent grant funder will drop a pile of cash on us to make the non-course approach also more resource intensive is a pipe dream, one I view as unhealthy at the outset.

A significant issue is your motivation. At a very general level, each of us is intrinsically motivated to do that which is pleasurable, but require some extrinsic motivation to do that which is not pleasurable. In the non-course, we are trying to make reading a pleasurable activity. That might very well depend on what it is that you're reading. So, while I will provide a reading list below, I suggest that you start off with things you expect to like in advance, and that probably will be fiction, short stories or novels. But maybe certain non-fiction gets your motor going. That's okay as well.

A related issue is difficulty level of what is being read. There is something like a Goldilocks effect here. If the reading material is too difficult for you, you will tire of it quickly and then likely not try reading it again in the near future. If the reading material is too easy for you, you'll zip through it and not feel that you got much out of the experience. Asking you to identify reading material that is just right, before you've read it may be a tall order, but you want that to be your ideal. Also note that if you read online or with an eReader, it's pretty easy to look up words and expand your vocabulary that way. Alternatively, you can write down words, where they appeared in what you are reading, and do dictionary look ups later, then go back to the place they appeared and see if you can make good meaning of what was written that way. If you continue to be unable to make good meaning of what you read, it won't be a pleasurable activity. However, if you practice diligently at this, you'll get better at making meaning while reading. The non-course is there, in part, to support students in doing this type of practice.

The reading list below is mostly non-fiction. I've compiled it over the years as my personal list on learning and leadership. Only the last entry is fiction. During the non-course I will make recommendations of other fiction you might read. Do note that I have a preference to read pieces that were written some time ago. I don't read current fiction too often these days with the exception of le Carré (who passed away recently) and Grisham.

You might very well ask whether any of the works listed below support what I've argued above. The essay on The Role of Deliberate Practice.... fits quite well with that argument. The book Mindset by Carol Dweck also fits. If you have the growth mindset, then you will believe that the practice will help you grow, so you stick with it. If you have the fixed mindset, then you don't believe practice will help and you'll stop doing it in short order. One of the questions the non-course aims at addressing is whether students who have operated under the fixed mindset in their regular courses can embrace the growth mindset in the non-course (and thereafter in the rest of their lives).

I should also point out a book not on the list called Grit by Angela Duckworth. It argues that perseverance is the key and sometimes you have to tough it out to keep going with the deliberate practice. It's not on the list for two reasons. I haven't read it and it goes against my own character. I do think perseverance is very important (though I prefer the term sitzfleisch) but I come at it via intrinsic interest in persisting, rather than as deferred gratification, as I believe Duckworth argues. And, especially for those who currently operate under the fixed mindset, I don't think the deferred gratification argument will get them to change their behavior so as to give them the growth mindset.

Reading List

The Bell Curve by Atul Gawande

Later a book review by James Surowiecki

Solitude and Leadership by William Deresiewicz

The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande

Democracy and Education by John Dewey

Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow

The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham Maslow

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi

Between the Devil and the Dragon by Eric Hoffer

The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon

How People Learn The National Academies Press