Reading

Reading is the complex cognitive process of decoding symbols to extract meanings. It is a form
of language processing.

Reading has become an extremely important activity for civilization, serving multiple purposes,
being a fundamental part of the educational process and the construction of the individual.

Reading good quality content broadens a person's horizons and expands their possibilities by
expanding their knowledge, intellectual development and their worldview, strengthening
personal convictions, the ability to argue and express opinions using a vocabulary more rich.

History

Thousands of years ago, man began to make inscriptions on the walls of caves, representing
animals and scenes from his daily life. These inscriptions, called rock art, later evolved into a
rudimentary form of communication, called pictography. The evolution of pictography made
man also develop sounds to convey the meaning of that writing, making communication and
relationships with other men possible.

Knowledge in antiquity, before the evolution of writing, was transmitted mainly orally, with
oratory being the basis of the teachings that masters transmitted to their apprentices, who
were just "listeners". In Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, writing and reading were restricted
to a privileged few, who were philosophers and aristocrats, called scribes. In ancient Rome,
writing was a way of securing patrician property rights. In the Middle Ages, few were literate.
Churches, monasteries and abbeys were the only centers of literate culture, where the only
schools and libraries of the time were located. In these places, ancient works of the Greco-
Roman heritage were preserved and restored.

In the High Middle Ages, formal education was basically restricted to the clerical environment.
During the Merovingian period, the church maintained episcopal schools, thus ensuring the
training of the clergy. In monasteries, ancient written documents and some books from the
Greek and Roman civilizations were read and copied. There was a sacred character in reading,
and both its teaching and that of writing were not obligatory for those who would not follow a
religious vocation. In this way, the church began to monopolize and censor the works that
would be transcribed, creating the idea that lay individuals should have respect and not
challenge the sacred teachings, just listening and memorizing them. In the middle of the 11th
century, there was a growth in commercial and manufacturing activities, leading to a growth of
urban areas. The church began to lose power over teaching and writing then advanced beyond
ecclesial boundaries, thus also reaching the laity, until reaching what is known today.

We can consider important reasons for the mentioned evolution of the decentralization of the
Church's intellectual monopoly, the so-called invention of the press, a graphic process
perfected by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. the walls of the Roman Church: the
publication of the Bible translated into German by the reformer Martin Luther in 1534,
considered important in the consolidation of the modern German language and which later
reached the large scale of half a million copies published in three decades - Luther's Bible ; the
propagation of the heliocentric model of the universe defended by Nicolaus Copernicus
Copernicus through his book published in 1543 (work: “On the revolutions of the celestial
spheres”) and the propagation of Physics by Isaac Newton with his most important work
composed of three volumes, published in 1687 (work: “Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy”), which, among other things, describes the Law of universal gravitation.

Acquisition

We can link the concept of reading to the literacy process, in a broader understanding of the
process of acquiring reading and writing skills and especially the social practice of these skills.
In this way, reading inserts us into a wider world of knowledge and meaning, enabling us to
even decipher it; hence the widespread notion of reading the world. Expanding the notion and
habit of reading accentuates the worldview in cultural and intellectual areas. For bibliophile
José Mindlin, "it is essential to facilitate people's access to books" so that they get used to
reading - regardless of gender and age. The important thing, he reminds us, is to create the
habit.[1]

Writing must have a meaning for those who read it, because knowing how to read cannot be
just representing the decoding of signs, symbols. Reading is much more than that; it is a
movement of interaction between people and the world and between them, and this is
acquired when it starts to exercise the social function of language, that is, when it leaves the
simplistic decoding for reading and re-elaboration.