Good Faith

                When most people think about being able to read, they think about the mechanical aspects of identifying words, sounds and letters.  It is true that readers have to learn to master semiotic systems that underly the written language, but reading is far from a mechanical exercise.  At its core, reading is a social activity that involves the reader in an ongoing and preestablished conversation, one that always takes the reader outside of herself even if her original encounter is personal.  One way of looking at a text is to see it as a complete and non-negotiable artifact.  In this view, the text has a meaning and it is the job of the reader to faithfully find that meaning.  The problem is that even the simplest texts have multiple possible meanings, and the reader finds the meaning they are most willing to find.  This is the basic insight of Reader Response Criticism.  Some versions give more power to the text, and some give more power to the reader, but they all see reading as an interaction or negotiation between the text and the reader.

                There are two more things that have to happen for a reading to take place.  First the reader has to make a commitment to the text (text here can be almost anything).  In order to read, the reader has to want to read.  If they don’t, no amount of mechanical proficiency will produce a valid reading.  One of the reasons that reading test scores are always dubious is because the students taking the test don’t want to read the test.  They are smart enough to know the test means more to the adults than it does to them, so they mail it in.  The second thing that has to happen is that the reader, even when deciding to engage, has to make a good faith effort.  That is, they have to be willing to try to play within the framework of the text and be willing to engage other readings from other readers.  When other teachers used to say, “yeah, but what if they say Hamlet is about dogs from Venus,” my response was they weren’t making a real effort.  The teacherly impulse is to tell them what it means, but telling them what it means is not a reading, it’s a command.

                Committing to a reading is demanding.  A reader has to set aside whatever they’re doing to enter another realm of languaging.  If the person has learned that they are going to be pressured for a ‘right’ answer, the commitment is even less likely.  Language regimes can be brutal things.  You can be corrected, ridiculed or even punished for not getting it right.  A real commitment begins by surrendering your time and focus to a social encounter.  It means you are going to try and read something that is not of your creation and might put you at odds with other people.  Just like listening to a friend is more than just hearing the words, a commitment to reading involves more than just decoding a text.  In fact, sometimes we retract our commitment after getting into the text and finding out we’re just not interested in continuing.

                The issue of making a good faith effort is even more important.  We’ve all had to read things we didn’t want to read.  We committed to finishing but not really trying to make our own meanings and compare it to the meanings others made.  Good faith means we are going to take this seriously and try to work through what troubles us or what we disagree about.  It means you care and will show some respect for the people and the process.  Without good faith, reading is reduced to a game that allows anyone to say anything.  

                I think what applies to reading applies to living in a democracy.  We have to make a choice to make a commitment to dialog of our culture.  That commitment means we are going to try and stick it out and give it our best shot.  It means we have to sometimes suspend our judgement and give the process a chance to work itself out.  It means we have to stay engaged.  When we don’t the democracy weakens and becomes stagnant. Making a good faith effort means that we will not just participate in the dialog but respect the people and processes that are part of it.  That means not reducing everything to personal attacks or throwing out the most outrageous and factually untrue things we can to gum up the works.  Right now, we have on political party who is no longer reading in good faith.  They don’t value the rules, and they don’t care if they ruin or destroy the game.  They think Hamlet is about dogs from Venus.