The Idea of Hidden Meanings

Today in class one of the students brought up the concept of reading to search for deeper meanings. I felt like this book really struck a nerve within me when it came to that subject. Throughout most of my high school career all I've ever known to do when reading an article, book, drama, or even watching a movie is "what deeper meaning/relation does the author/director make?" Bartholomae and Petrosky couldn't have out it in any better words than this passage:
     
 "Student readers, for example, can take responsibility for determining the meaning of the text. They work as though they were as though they were doing something other than finding ideas already there on the page and they can be guided by their impressions or questions as they read. We are not, now, talking about finding hidden meanings. If such things as hidden meanings can be said to exist, they are hidden by readers' habits and prejudices (by readers' assumptions that what they read should tell them what they already know), or by readers' timidity and passivity (by their unwillingness to take the responsibility to speak their minds and say what they notice)"(6)

I never really actually got into the habit of looking for deeper meanings, just waited until the teacher told me what she saw and then went off of that. But now I feel as though someone understands the kind of thinker that I am. When I tell you what I inferred from a passage or understood it not simply written by the author and reiterated by me. No it is what I felt the author was saying to me in a particular case. I did not pull my findings out of thin air; they came from my experiences that I saw within the piece.

That is all. Thank you for listening to my little rant :)

P.S. I think I'm really gonna like this class.

Kisses_Ashley