Reading Magic

 

I begin every school assembly program with the Three Reasons Reading is Magic.  I call them the Three E's.

Education

   

Ben Franklin only had the chance to go to school for two years.  Abraham Lincoln went to school for one year.  Thomas Edison went to school just a few weeks.  

"Because of hearing problems, Edison had difficulty following the lessons and his school attendance became sporadic. Nevertheless, Edison became a voracious reader and at age 10, he set up a laboratory in his basement."  

Thus, a mighty secret is revealed:  We can educate ourselves by reading!  In fact, Rich Davis believes that the only way we become educated is by self-education.  Many people go all the way through elementary, middle and high school and don't know a thing when they get through.  Others become very smart while still in early grades of school.  

Reading for knowledge, reading for information, reading for the love of learning is the key.  Get excited about reading and learning.  

Emulate the young Franklin, the young Edison.  Love reading, love learning, and aim to be a great student in school . . . you will go far!

Explore

 

Reading is fun.  Reading leads to great adventures.  Go anywhere you want by reading!  Think of the possibilities.  With a little imagination and a stack of books from the library, you can go to remote parts of the world, live with strange people, do wonderful things.

You can go under the ocean.

You can go into outer space.

You can do like Rich Davis did years ago and get excited about World War I aviators.  Read their stories.  Follow their footsteps.  Become one of them!

Everything you read about adds to your store of knowledge, your personal power.  

Everything you read makes you smarter and better able to understand the world and other people.

Everything you read presents an opportunity for discovery and adventure.  New worlds, new possibilities await!        

Expert      

Did you ever think about what makes people successful?  Most folks want to be somebody when they grow up, somebody special.  What exactly makes people special?  Ben Franklin read and studied and thought about problems until he understood them better than anyone else.

Ben became a super expert in many areas, in addition to electricity.  Franklin's experiments with electricity made him world famous.

Believe it or not, you can become a famous expert now!  You can select something you love, something you want to know more about, and read about it, and study it, and talk to people about it, until you know more than anyone else about the subject.  I tell you how to do this in the section below called The Magic of Reading Challenge.

I hope you see the magic in these Three E's.  You can prove the Three E's for yourself!  For example, you can Educate yourself on a topic (Ben Franklin's Inventions, Thomas Edison's life, World War I flying aces), and have fun Exploring, while you become an Expert on the topic. Read about any of these subjects and in two weeks you will know more about them than anyone else in your class; in two months you will know more about them than anyone else in your school; in two years you will know more than anyone else in your state!

 

 

 

The Magic of Reading Challenge

 

The Magic of Reading Challenge can be life-changing for you.  It can be fun, it can be exciting, it can provide a great many rewards.  You can get into it as lightly or as deeply as you like.  

The Magic of Reading Challenge can become a life's work, a part-time job, or a summer project.  It can become a rewarding, valuable hobby.  I will provide guidelines, but it is up to you to decide exactly how you want to use this information.  

                                                                                                        

There are three steps to the challenge.  

1.  Select something you wish to know more about than anybody else.

2.  Read about your subject until you know a lot about it.

3.  Use your information somehow.

The idea is to become an expert in something--ideally, to know more about that topic than anyone else.  When you become an expert in something, you become valuable to others.  They want you around.  They will pay you money!  If you become more knowledgeable than anyone else, they will pay you a lot of money.

As a young person in school, you may not be looking for a full-time job now, but it will still be very nice to have people respect you and appreciate your special knowledge or ability.

And who is to say you will not receive payment of some kind.  That's up to you.

Now, let's give you an example of how Rich Davis and others have taken The Magic of Reading Challenge:

In 1992 Rich Davis had an idea to help others.  He called it The Magic of Talk.  The idea was that people could improve themselves by learning how to communicate better with others.  Rich asked himself this question:  How can I get people interested in this new idea?  The answer he finally selected was "I will dress up like Benjamin Franklin and deliver my message in the character and dress of a famous and great communicator!"

At this point Rich Davis took The Magic of Reading Challenge.  He decided to read about Ben Franklin until he knew more about him than anyone else.  Then, he would do something with this information.  He would find groups of people he could share this information with in the form of a special program he would put on.  Later, he planned to write a book!

One month after taking The Magic of Reading Challenge, Rich performed his first show at Pack Memorial Library in Asheville, North Carolina.  Less than one year later, he was traveling several states speaking in the character and dress as Ben Franklin full time!  

Hunter Scott's Story

The following is the story of a young student who took a similar challenge and changed history.  

A few years ago Hunter Scott, a sixth-grade student from Pensacola, Florida, was watching the movie Jaws.  There is a place in the movie where the old crusty boat captain Quint casually mentions the ordeal of the sailors on the ship Indianapolis after it was sunk by a Japanese submarine during the final weeks of World War II.  

Hunter asked his father if it was true that hundreds of sailors floated around in the Pacific Ocean for several days while sharks and thirst and sun and other hazards took a terrible toll.  His father said he thought the story was true.  Hunter decided this might be an excellent topic for his school's history fair.

What Hunter did then was magic.  He read about the Indianapolis and made contact with several survivors.  He found out that the captain of the ship, Charles B. McVay, had been unjustly court-martialed for the sinking of the Indianapolis.  Hunter became an expert on the Indianapolis and attended the 1997 reunion of the survivors.  He was elected an "honorary survivor" by the old sailors, many of whom he had corresponded with.  He was presented with Captain McVay's dog tag from his days at the U.S. Naval Academy by McVay's son.

What Hunter had done was renew interest in the survivors and other important people about clearing McVay's name in connection with the tragedy.  In 1999 Hunter, now a 9th grade student, spoke at a congressional hearing.  He said:  "In 1806 Thomas Jefferson wrote, 'Political interest can never be separated in the long run from moral right.'  Fifty-four years after the politically motivated court-martial of a man who should never have been brought to trial, we are in the 'long run,' and you have the opportunity to do what is morally right.  You can set the record straight concerning Captain McVay and the crew of the USS Indianapolis.  When I started this mission, there were 154 survivors.  Today, there are 134 still with us.  Please restore the honor of their ship while some of them are still alive to see this dream become a reality."

Now, isn't that spoken like an expert?  Hunter had not only become more knowledgeable about the Indianapolis than almost anybody else, he had influenced history himself!  What he did with his information was amazing.

On October 12, 2000, a joint House-Senate resolution was passed.  It stated that "the American people should now recognize Captain McVay's lack of culpability for the tragic loss of the Indianapolis and the lives of the men who died as a result of the sinking of the vessel . . . Captain McVay's military record should now reflect that he is exonerated for the loss of the USS Indianapolis and so many of her crew."

All of this resulted directly from Hunter Scott's history project!

Hunter did not begin his project thinking he would change history; he took it one step at a time and took action naturally as he acquired more knowledge and information.  I suggest to you:  Find something that interests you and read about it until you know more than anybody else.  As you begin to acquire knowledge, find a way to use it or to share it with others.  Begin in your school, your church, your neighborhood.  You may one day travel across your state or speak before Congress--but don't worry about that now.  Now, find something you love and read!

USS Indianapolis      

Go to the Indianapolis survivors' web site for more about the fascinating story of this ship and Hunter Scott's role in changing history: http://www.ussindianapolis.org/resolution.htm

Note:  

You may ask, "Do I really have to know more than anybody else about the topic I choose for The Magic of Reading Challenge?"  

My answer is No!  That's the goal, but it could take you one month or fifty years to achieve it.  You should begin to take action as soon as you know more than most folks you are likely to meet.

I began performing as Ben Franklin just a few weeks after I began studying about him.  I didn't then, and don't now, know more than anyone else about Benjamin Franklin.  But I know a lot!  I haven't met anyone in the hundreds of thousands of people in my audiences that I believed knew more.  But it would not bother me if I did!

Hunter Scott likely does not know more about the Indianapolis than anyone else.  But he surely knows more than any other kid in Pensacola . . . and probably the state of Florida!  He can speak with confidence because he knows a lot and has done a lot with his information.  

That is what you want from your project!

 

 

 

 

Become a Learning Genius!

 

 

Becoming a learning genius is not so hard!  First, believe you are very smart.  Second act like you are very smart.  Third, never, ever doubt yourself.  When you begin to see yourself as a genius, you will become one.  Results are to be expected and they will follow.

 

"Genius is self-imposed; mediocrity is self-bestowed."

Walter Russell

If you've been wondering what topic to choose for a Magic of Reading Challenge, I have a suggestion:  Decide to become a learning genius.  Read about fascinating techniques you can use to double, triple your speed of learning--or increase it to the power of ten!  This would be a fun project.  This would help you with your school work from now until graduate school, and you could teach the technique to others for fun and profit.

 

Once again--the key to getting into learning about memory: don't think of it as work, think of it as fun!