Reading vs. writing

Too much emphasis, these days, at all levels of educational instruction, is placed on reading, but not on writing. Many people read well, but only a select few write well. Furthermore, when one reads too much, one becomes a slave to the thoughts of the authors which are read, and that is even worse than not reading at all.

The salient problem revolves around school teachers placing reading as the only criterion for a quality education—wrong.

Although both reading and writing are important, writing is much more important than reading, because the act of writing allows one to express, and thereby strengthen—especially in time—one’s own thoughts and feelings, and become a better thinker than one would have been if one only reads, but at the expense of not writing. Indeed, too much reading is bad for ones’ mental capacity if the reader cannot also write.

Many a newspaper is quick to inform the public that reading skills have improved or decreased throughout the ages at our educational institutions, but never is there comment upon writing skills, and that is plain wrong-headed thinking.

Thus, after one graduates from ones’ educational endeavors, one always finds it difficult to put his or her thoughts and feelings down on paper, as it were, and that is educational suicide. Dr. Robert W. Burton

Santa Clarita