"Non-Reader" Conversion Story

A mission companion once told me that listening to a book on tape/CD does not count as having "read" the book. I beg to differ - being very high on the auditory learner end of the spectrum. I tend to think I can absorb the same amount of knowledge as one who "read" the book with her eyes. After much debate (what else is there to do at night in your mission apartment???) we still differed on this subject - so when President Hinckley asked all members to "Read the Book of Mormon," I wondered what HE would think of those of us who listened to it????

Over three years ago, I came in contact with an educational paradigm - Thomas Jefferson Education - and it drastically changed my life.

I was invited to a youth camp (Youth For America, held annually) to observe. I arrived just before the adolescents did, and found a seat in the welcome room. I watched as each of them arrived at their camp orientation. Youth came from various states and Canada, some meeting each other for the first time, others were return participants. I marveled at their maturity in interacting one with another - introducing themselves, being assertive, seemingly quite secure, not the "typical" teenage scene (generally highly regarded as a time of insecurity). As the youth were seated and the orientation began, the speaker asked, "Who knows who Montesque is?" I was lost - the first question of the day, and I was lost! I was thinking, "Wait, Montegue (?) is Romeo and Juliet - not that I 've ever read it, or seen it, but I think that's the name. But that's not what this guy said???"

There was a low mumbling of answers, like in Sunday school when the teacher asks something as common as, "How can we communicate with Heavenly Father?" I heard the boy next to me say, "We know, he wrote the Spirit of the Laws."

"Okay, wait - What planet are these people from?" I thought. This was in 2005 - I had not just crawled out of a hole, or so I thought. I'd graduated from college, and graduate school - I thought I had earned an education. I had been married 3 years, I just had my 2nd child, but I had NO IDEA what these "teens" were discussing - and it went downhill from there.

What they were discussing, I later discovered, was a great philospher whose ideas were well known by our country's founding fathers and upon which a great degree of our country's constitution is founded.

But at the time, I had NO IDEA. What I did have in that moment, was, in psychological terms, an "existential crisis." That is what happens when everything you are, everything you know to be true, is suddenly challenged, or seemingly shattered in an instant, and you're left to figure out up from down, truth from error, and where you fit in all of the broken pieces.

My "shattering" was this: All my life I thought that "getting an education" meant going to school. And that going to college (and doing well) and then graduate school, was considered a "good education" especially for a girl my age. As I sat with these youth, however, who, throughout the day discussed subjects way over my head and articulated their "missions in life" and how they were making a "difference in the world," I began to shrink, wondering, "What did I learn in the past 18 years of school???" I felt like a preschooler among scholars.

I had a do or die moment. I could either choose to crawl into a hole and die of shame, or, enroll in a fresh pursuit of obtaining an "education."

Thus, in 2005 I entered the "preschool" of Thomas Jefferson Education (which is the modality from which these particular youth had emerged).

The first incorrect assumption I had to rid myself of was the long held belief that I could learn without reading. Having acquired that belief in elementary school, and having proven throughout ALL of my schooling years that I could "succeed" (meaning get top grades in classes I chose to succeed in) without cracking a book or dusting my feet at a library door, I had to buckle down and start at the beginning. A real education, I came to believe, comes from the study of classics - in every subject - classics can only be studied by reading them (or, listening to them, perhaps :) They cannot be transmitted through textbook summaries. I swallowed my pride and officially (I did announce it to the world) converted from a proud, "non-reader" to a "reader."

My first book was Les Miserables - the unabridged version. Loved it! It has taken me years, but I'm still trying, daily, to make myself create the time and space to read.

All of this history, was simply to announce that I had a great day today. The cosmos must have been aligned because I had time to leisurely read and I looked at the stack of books that I'm currently purusing, and I wanted to share my current picks:

Power Birth (Lydi Ronka Owen) - absolutely life changing - the BEST birthing book ever - short, simple, empowering.

The Infinite Power of Hope - Elder Uchtdorf's Oct. conference message. Holy Moly - I have to take it a word at a time b/c he's so darn right on!

What Your first Grader Needs to Know (E.D. Hirsch Jr.) - an educational alternative to "typical" curriculum

Strengthening Marriage - LDS Family Services - a new manual for the church's marriage and family class.

The Relationship Cure - John M. Gottman

and Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative (Ken Robinson - who I posted earlier on a youtube link).

My goal in this coming week is to share the "ah-hahs" from these picks. I'm just so proud of myself for being a "reader." It's like I've joined a new club or passed some kind of milestone in life, a "coming of age" experience, like getting your first bra. It's like now I'm "one of the girls."

My next problem is finding people to discuss these things with - I'm still an auditory learner, but I guess I read kind of quirky stuff, b/c there's not a whole lot of book clubs out there touting these titles.

However, because I am anti-mass hystery as well, I don't think I'll ever find the right book club for me. I refused to see the movie Titanic (haven't to this day) b/c of the craze. It was so peculiar to be "out of the loop" and observe the hysteria as my girlfriends would talk about it and dreamingly pant over Leonardo. Thus, I also refuse to read Twilight (Can I even spell it?).

Just give me some Gottman and leave me alone. Real life is so much more dramatic than fiction - why go anywhere else?