"...Reading is for idiots."

Like Leta and Claire, I felt like Salvatori had a lot of interesting ideas without much resolution. Even as she offers "certain teaching strategies that simultaneously enable and force me and my students to reflect on the moves we make as readers, writers, and thinkers," she says these strategies are not "mere applications or implementations of somebody else's theories, and [...] I do not intend to offer them as such" (352, italics in original).

Okay...so if they are not applications or implementations of someone else's theories, what are they? Implementations of her own theories? Of course her own theories are going to work for her own classroom. If I was told to think about my own process of reading, I would say "I pick up a book and read it and some things stick out to me because of the theoretical lenses I have been trained to experience." Um...easy enough? If someone asked me to think about my process of writing or thinking, I would probably say "I sit down and write as it comes to me." Maybe if I were in psychology (or perhaps neurology), I would understand the process of thinking a little bit more, but we can't all be so lucky.

So I guess my point is, there are specific fields that focus on the study of reading, writing, and thinking. It's all a little too meta for my tastes, but I recognize that it's also invariably bound up together. One of little quote-gems I took away from this week was "Reading is a form of thinking" (351). Yes, that is out of context, but it still made me laugh out loud. You mean we need to be cognizant to understand words? No, wait...we actually have to think about it? Is it wrong to assume that our students will take this for granted in the same way that we do? Most importantly, am I so indoctrinated into the English discipline that I cannot even comprehend people who think reading is for idiots?