From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 12:28:20 -0400

uma at umakrishnaswami.com writes:

I agree with you wholeheartedly that reading gives power (in the way espoused by Paulo Freire). I saw it firsthand in Sierra Leone. I was there, after all, to help people learn; I taught reading, English, and lots more! But what I was trying to get at (perhaps poorly, my apologies) in my post, was that book reading, as I see it advocated in the US, was simply not the way the people I knew in Sierra Leone (from all social levels) completed themselves emotionally and intellectually. Reading books as I do was not what they used to figure out their world and place in it. (The only books I saw people using this way were the Bible and the Koran.)


Where I read books to help me figure out the world, they had other avenues for this. What troubles me often is that we raise book reading on such a pinnacle --- as in "this made me who I am" and "this changed my life." I just wanted to acknowledge that for some people throughout the world, other vehicles do that too, quite successfully.


Monica

Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Sun 18 Jul 2004 11:28:20 AM CDT