not accounting for exigence and response
One of the biggest reasons why most people I know find academic texts boring/tedious/unrelatable is they don't see the need to examine why the piece was actually constructed in the first place, which is something I find myself stressing the importance of whenever I get into a conversation about studying English and why it's valuable. Exigence is so important and more people should care!!
The Chamber of Secrets
It's funny the author chose this specific Harry Potter book (second in the series instead of the first) because the actual chamber in the novel requires very specific conditions to successfully open, so he might be drawing a parallel between the way we believe we need to decipher academic texts in one particular way vs. the method he lays out for the reader.
diatribe
I associate the word "diatribe" with an attack or spirited criticism, so this makes me wonder who/what exactly is the target of this animosity. Is it an attack on how most people tend to moralize reading, or a passionate argument about how it is necessary in an academic setting to introduce potentially an overwhelming amount of texts? I find this word choice interesting
In response to this problem, we might want to develop something like a reading ethics that is notthe moralized imperative about reading all the things but a productive practice for how we read,especially texts that are academic or philosophic in nature.
I wonder who the "we" is that the author is referring to? Most of the people who feel disincentivized from reading are probably not the ones who will end up reading this article, and I am not sure they would be particularly interested in developing a reading ethics (such as the "ADHD-prone" kids he mentions earlier on).
Compounding the problem, the sheer volume of our reading loads alwaysleaves us feeling bad for not reading more and never being able to read enough.
Unfortunately I feel like most college students feel this way- so many of my friends wish they read more but they either don't have time or just feel like it's a chore because of the amount of reading they are already assigned.
Something that our ADHD-pronekids should be doing more.
I find it interesting that the author chooses to use the term "ADHD-prone" instead of just ADHD. The way that this statement is framed, it seems to say that reading may act as a cure to ADHD symptoms in youth when in reality it is a clinical disorder and not merely a catch-all label for kids who have been raised to have short attention spans (a phenomenon I assume the writer is attributing to the rise of technology).