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Main ideas: Example
In the following paragraphs main ideas have been placed in bold.
Education traditionally has given students packages of information
that are largely context free. Even when the context is provided,
the manner in which the information is presented still encourages
mindless processing. Saying, for instance, that there were
three reasons for the Civil War omits both context and perspective.
What did a fifty-year-old Southern white man think the reasons
were? A fifty-year-old black? A young Northern woman? And so on.
When omitting points of view, the text or teacher treats the
information as true irrespective of perspective, that is, as a
fact. Even if information is given from two perspectives,
if the possibility of additional views is not intentionally built
in, the tendency of students is to consider these two just as
rigidly; there would simply be twice as much information to memorize.
Closed packages of information are taken as facts. Facts
are taken as absolute truths to be learned as is, to be memorized,
leaving little reason to think about them. Without any reason
to open up the package, there is little chance that the information
will lead to any conceptual insights or even be rethought in a
new context. We can think of such encapsulated information as
overlearning.
(Langer, E. 1997, The Power of Mindful
Learning, Perseus Books, Reading, Mass., p. 43)
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What are regarded as main ideas will depend on the purpose
of your reading. If you are reading to prepare for a lengthy assignment
on the role of memory in learning, then all the words in bold may be regarded
as main ideas, and even the example of the Civil War may be important.
If, however, you are only skimming to quickly find relevant ideas, the
words in bold in the first two sentences are enough to express the main
idea of this whole section.
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