How to Read a Book--by Mortimer J. Adler (Discussion 1--Active learning)

Only those who learn actively can benefit from reading books. That is the reason why I prefer self-study to being taught by school. When I engage in learning process either by reading or writing, I am actively exploring new knowledge on my own.

Most of students hate reading books because they are trained to swallow content in the books, they are directed to the wrong way of learning, they are spoon-fed by teachers and thus they lack of actively learning enthusiam. That is the failure of today's education--we are trained to be taught not are taught to learn by ourselves.

One of my friends said that every time he tried to read a book, he would quickly fall into asleep. He blamed his unsuccessful reading attempt for lacking interest and talent. While I think the cause of the failure is due to the fact that he had not prepared for active learning and not fully realise the hardship in the process.

Actively learning needs huge amount of effort, relative skills, determination,awake mind and so forth. It sounds terrible and difficult to most people and that is why some people never try to learn actively. While like any other kind of arts, reading can be improved by practising skills. At the very beginning, we would feel painful to read and interpret words, sentences and paragraghs,let alone criticising author's views. But we will get better after we try several times and only the practice day by day can make our reading skills come near to "perfect".

Self-learning is not a mission impossible. But you should start it as soon as possible and try to develop the reading practices into life-long habit. Sooner or later, you will see the benefits of it.