Read to understand, question, and validate facts

This is a reply to “Why we’re disinterested in reading” (Young Blood, 12/5/21).

I enjoyed reading and learned a lot from the article. I understand your initial idea and feeling for the lack of interest to read when you were younger. I am glad that you have a better view of why reading is important and excellent reasons to read now as a college student. Aside from the reasons you have mentioned to encourage us to read, our passion and curiosity are excellent motivators to develop our excitement and fascination to read. Our personality, as well as our interests, will grow and change over the years. I am sure that you will enjoy the Socratic questioning of Socrates, the doctrine of ideas of Plato, and the writings of Aristotle. Also, those ideas learned at the hallways of Greek structures or “stoa” which encourage us to reach our highest potential or “arete,” now as a philosophy major.

The most important result from reading is our comprehension or understanding of what we read. In grades 4 to 6, we can check our understanding by answering questions developed from Barrett’s Taxonomy. As we start college, we can check our understanding from Bloom’s Taxonomy. The questions from these learning approaches are progressive or suited to the level of maturity and experiences of the individual or student. A certain region of our brain usually grows when we regularly read and understand what we read. We can also use what is stored in our brain to combine with what we learn from reading to create new ideas, products, services; make better decisions; and solve complex problems. What we build and store in our brain are like the “brown bags” (“baon” in Filipino) that we can later download to combine with new ideas to create other new ones.

Nowadays, one of the most important reasons to be interested in reading is for us to develop the competency to validate what we read through reading credible sources. Most might be surprised but it is very exciting and fascinating to read and understand academic journals, and other scholarly and scientific literature to learn new ideas. We can eventually apply these ideas for individual, organizational, and socioeconomic development.

For the benefit of anyone who loves to read and wants to improve, it is best to read and learn new competencies during lockdowns. The competencies we acquire from what we read, understand, and what we can apply are given importance by companies or most organizations in hiring an applicant.

Reading and understanding what we read help us to have better discernment. The information we understand as a result of reading provides us with better alternatives, possibilities, opportunities, and solutions we can use for real-life and real-world problems aside from what we experience in our daily life. It is exciting and fascinating to read to find answers to our curiosity rather than what others, as mentioned in the article, view as a “mere requirement.” This gives us a sense of fulfillment after we discover the answers from what we read.

RAYMUND SISENANDO R. MERCADO
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