How To Read: AC Correspondence Course 1970
In the Ambassador College Correspondence Course, Lesson 36, in 1970 - the Church told it's members and readers of the Correspondence Course how to read. Here's what they said:
- Don't waste time reading trashy novels filled with sex and filth.
- Don't read comic books filled with violence and gore.
- Choose profitable, useful, educational books.
- Choose books on history, ecology, pollution, the population explosion, and other world problems.
- Visit the non-fiction section of your local library.
- Read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Too Many, Famine - 1975, Our Precarious Habitat, The Hidden Persuaders
- Read a weekly news magazine for reports on global affairs.
- Read books on getting things done like How To Get More Done in Less Time, The Technique of Getting Things Done, Streamlining Your Executive Workload
- Read worthwhile books, magazines, and important news.
After telling you WHAT to read, now they tell you HOW to read.
- Read with a purpose, not aimlessly.
- Concentrate.
- Pause from time to time to summarize the material.
- Think about what you are reading.
- Read faster.
- Skim unimportant sections and trivia.
- Take a reading course for faster reading.
- Mark the material.
- Underline the important sections.
- Put stars or asterisks in the margin.
There. Now you can be perfectly assimilated on what to read and how to read it. Because you were never adult enough to make up your own mind or your own choices on reading. It was these doctrines that caused:
- Parents to forbid fiction reading for children
- Parents to think imagination or fantasy was wrong for children
- Parents to forbid all comic books (even the tame ones!)
- Married couples to be completely unimaginative and dull in the bedroom.
- The most marked up books ever found in Garage Sales ;)
- People to watch shows such as Wall Street Week or Washington Week in Review to fulfill their "watch" Obligations.
Books they recommended: (Fear religion!)
z
(Read the Reviews - Trash)
(Fearing Famine)
6 comments:
I have to say that the Correspondance Course was the most idiotic thing the church ever produced. It was nothing more than a brainwashing tool and had NOTHING to do with a person discovering their own personal faith. The entire course was one big prooftext.
We WERE allowed to read fiction. I read The Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong? Even GTA said that much of it was fiction.
"Don't waste time reading trashy novels filled with sex and filth"
Instead, just go to AC and join up with HWA and GTA and LIVE A LIFE filled with sex and filth!.
Gerald Waterhouse declared we should not read Shakespeare and Chaucer. You could hear in his voice what utter contempt he had for them.
And he was right. In high school I would carry a paperback copy of one or another of Shakespeare's plays to read while killing time between tasks that required full attention. Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales* came later, except for a couple of tales in our senior year literature class, but those were fascinating too. The trouble with them was, they were so interesting that they ruined my taste for the Bible, except for Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Esther, and some of the New Testament parables.
One reason? No pressure to read them as factual. I could examine them as literary constructs that modeled the way humans actually do things and hold the model up to experience to see how they matched up. The term "critical thinking" was not in vogue yet, but that's what literature stimulated me to do.
Looking back, it seems to me the habit of reading critically was the very thing that kept me from getting sucked into accepting COG doctrine. That's what I mean by saying Waterhouse was right. He wanted young people to accept Armstrong's ideas. The church had to keep them from reading anything fictional or speculative, anything that invites them to look at human problems from a variety of perspectives. Especially keep them away from anything satirical. They couldn't afford to have them reading anything that subtly suggested implications that undercut the literal meaning of the text. They might adopt the habit and start reading scripture that way.
Whaaaat? I got to throw away my Batman comic books? !
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