Levels and Stages

Some notables are vital to the reading project. First—well, where do I start?—is the essential reading, the primary focus of my writing this blog. The author, or I should say authors, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (for shortened purposes Adler and Von Doren) begin with the purpose of the initial reading. What is to be expected?

But for now, I want to divert to a reason why I think I should participate in this activity. Why on God’s green earth should I even read? Well, there are certainly different reasons for the activity itself, but for me, I am content to say that it is ultimately to find the answer (or answers) of all philanthropic endeavor—happiness. Let’s find a more proximate goal in mind that I can share with my general audience; the goal, therefore, is for knowledge. Whether one is reading a manual for a television set or a philosophical inquiry, the person seeks answers for his or her intended purposes. So let the reason be that we seek knowledge.

In this reading prospect we have levels in the reading hierarchy, or I should probably add the levels in which we deal in the reading process. Without dealing in the specifics of each level, meaning that the stages not conferred in detail, I will outline only the levels. This installment will only include the primary functions of the first level and the meaning of the two other levels, though I will not outline and explain them like the first.

In the first level most of us have already learned, granted that he or she—the reader—has lived in the states and has had some kind of formal education. Subdivided, the stages are elementary up to the ninth grade stages. A level of high school reading is enough to live and communicate in the modern milieu, but certainly not enough to be a critical writer or reader. This kind of reading requires a more advanced kind of level in reading, a proactive approach, viz. the third level in reading—analytical reading. I will give a more detailed analysis of the primary level and its stages with citations from the book, How to Read a Book. First I need to learn how to hyperlink cross-references on this web log (or as the cyber world puts it, “blog”).