You may be able to read books with ease and even enjoyment, yet still feel that your reading rarely produces lasting understanding. You finish chapters, underline passages, and recognize important ideas, but little remains with you afterward. You sense that you are reading, but not truly studying.
This experience is common. Modern education trains students to consume text, extract information, and move on. Rarely are they taught how to read slowly, attentively, and methodically, or how to submit their reading to an ordered discipline aimed at understanding rather than exposure. As a result, reading becomes habitual, but study never develops.
If this describes your experience, the problem is not that books are too difficult or that you lack intelligence. The problem is that you were never taught how to study books seriously. Reading and study are not the same activity. Study requires method, order, and accountability, while reading alone does not.
The question, then, is whether there exists a way for you to learn how to study books seriously rather than merely read them, and to do so in a disciplined and reliable manner.
The CLAA self-study program exists to address precisely this problem. It does not treat reading as an end in itself, but as a means ordered toward understanding. Books are not consumed casually, but studied according to a fixed sequence and clear expectations.
Within the program, reading is guided by structure. You are not asked simply to read and reflect privately. You are required to demonstrate understanding through written work, exercises, and assessments that make superficial reading impossible. This transforms reading into disciplined study.
Because the curriculum is ordered, books are approached at the right time and for the right purpose. You are not left to struggle alone with texts for which you are unprepared, nor allowed to skim texts that require careful attention. Over time, habits of slow reading, careful analysis, and deliberate thought are formed.
The program does not assume that you already know how to study. It teaches study by requiring it. Through repeated practice under objective standards, reading is gradually transformed from a passive activity into an intellectual discipline.
At this point, you may raise reasonable objections.
You may object that studying in this way sounds rigid or restrictive. Yet discipline is not opposed to freedom. Without discipline, reading remains aimless and unproductive. Order makes serious study possible.
You may worry that this approach will make reading burdensome or unpleasant. In practice, the opposite is often true. When understanding increases, reading becomes more satisfying rather than less, because effort produces real insight.
You may doubt whether a self-study program can truly teach the art of study. This doubt is understandable. The difference here lies in accountability. Study is not encouraged; it is required and measured. Habits form through repeated, enforced practice.
You may fear discovering that your previous reading habits were shallow or ineffective. This fear is reasonable. Yet recognizing that fact is not a failure, but the beginning of genuine study.
Finally, you may question whether such discipline is necessary at all. Casual reading has its place. But serious intellectual formation requires more than exposure. It requires method.
The question before you, then, is not whether you enjoy reading, but whether you wish to learn how to study books seriously and profitably.
If this program provides that discipline and method, enrollment is appropriate.
If it does not, you should not enroll.
Hope this helps you make the right decision. If you have any further questions, please contact us.