HOW TO READ A BOOK Read online

  However difficult it may be to read, it is easier than writing and speaking well. To communicate well to others, one must know how communications are received, and be able, in addition, to master the medium to produce the desired effects. Though the arts of teaching and being taught are corrrelative, the teacher, either as writer or speaker, must prevision the process of being taught in order to direct it. He must, in short, be able to read what he writes, or listen to what he says, as if he wre being taught by it. When teach rs themselves do not possess the art of being taught, they cannot be very good teachers.

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  I do not have to askj yo to accept my unsupported prediction or to meet my wager in the blind. The experts can be called to tesify in the light of scientific evidence. The product of our schools has been measured by the accredited apparatus of achievement tests.

  These tests touch all sorts of academic accomplishment—standard areas of information, as well as the basic skills, the three R's. They show not only that the high-school graduate is unskilled but also that he is shockingly uninformed. We must confine our attention to the defects of skill and especialy to reading, although the finding on writing and speaking are supporting evidence that the high-school graduate is generally at sea when it comes to any aspect of communication.

  This is hardly a laughing matter. However deplorable it may that those who have gone through twelve years of schooling should lack rudimentary information, how much more so is it that they should be disbarred from using the only means that can remedy the situatiion. If they could read—not to mention write and speak—they might be able to inform themselves throughout their adult life.

  Notice that the defect which the tests discover is in the easier type of reading—reading for information. For the most part, the tests do not even measure ability to read for understanding. If they did, the results would cause a riot.

  Last year Profesor James Mursell, of Columbia's Teachers of College, wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly, entitled "The Defeat of Schools." He based his allegation on

  "thousands of investigations" which comprise the "consistent testimony of thirty years of enormously varied research in education." A large mass of evidence comes from a recent survey of the schools of Pennsylvania carried on by the Carnegie Foundation. Let me quote his own words:

  What about English? Here, too, there is a record of failure and defeat. Do pupils in school learn to read their mother tongue effectively? Yes and no. Up to the fifth and sixth grade, reading, on the whole, is effectively ttaught and well learned. To that level we find a steady and general improvement, but beyond it the curves flatten out to a dead level. This is not because a person arrives at his natural limit of efficiency when he reaches the sixth grade, for it has been shown again and again that with special tuition much older children, and also adults, can make enormous improvement. Nor does it mean that most sixth-graders read well enough for all practical purposes. A great many pupils do poorly in high school because of sheer ineptitude in getting meaning from the printed page. They can improve; they need to improve; but they don't.

  The average high-school graduates has done a great deal of reading, and if he goes on to college he will do a great deal more; but he is likely to be poor and incompetent reader.

  (Note that this holds true of the average student, not the person who is a subject for special remedial treatment.) He can follow a simple piece of fiction and enjoy it. But put him up against a closely written exposition, a carefully and economically stated argument, or a passage requiring critical consideration, and he is at a loss. It has been shown, for instance, that the average high-school student is amazingly inept at indicating the central thought of a passage, or the levels of emphasis and subordination in an argument or exposition. To all intents and purposes he remains a sixth-grade reader till well along in college.

  Even after he has finished college, I must add, he is not much better. I think it is true that no one can get through college who cannot read for information with reasonable efficiency. It may even be that he could not get into college were he thus deficient. But if we keep in mind the distinction between the types of reading, and remember that the tests measure primarily the ability to do the simpler sort, we cannot take much consolation from the fact that college students read better than sixth-graders. Evidence from the graduate and professional schools tends to show that, so far as reading for understanding is concerned, they are still sixth-graders.

  Professor Mursell writes even more dismally of the range of reading in which the schools succeed in engaging the interest of students:

  Pupils in school, and also high-school and college graduates, read but little. Medium-grade magazines and fair-to-medium fiction are the chief standbys. Reading choices are made on hearsay, casual recommendations, and display advertising. Education is clearly not producing a discriminating or venturesome reading public. As one investigator concludes, there is no indication "that the schools are developing permanent interest in reading as a leisure-time activity."

  It is somewhat sanguine to talk about students and graduates reading the great books, when it appears that they do not read even the good nonfiction books which come out every year.

  I pass rapidly over Mursell's further report of the facts about writing: that the average student cannot express himself "clearly, exactly, and orderly in his native tongue"; that

  "a great many high-school pupils are not able to discriminate between what is a sentence and what is not"; that the average student has an impoverished vocabulary. "As one goes from senior year in high school to senior year in college, the vocabulary content of written English hardly seems to increase at all. After twelve years in school a great many students still use English in many respects childish and undeveloped; and four years more bring slight improvement." These facts have bearing on reading. The student who cannot "express find and precise shades of meaning" certainly cannot detect them in the expression of anyone else who is trying to communicate above the level of subtlety which a sixth-grader can grasp.

  There is more evidence to cite. Recently the Board of Regents of New York State solicited an inquiry into the achievement of its schools. This was carried out by an commission under the supervision of Professor Luther Gulick of Columbia. One of the volumes of the report treats of the high schools, and in this a section is devoted to the

  "command of the tools learning." Let me quote again: Large numbers even of the high school graduates are seriously deficient in the basic tools of learning. The tests given to leaving pupils by the Inquiry included a test of ability to read and understand straightforward English... The passages presented to the pupils consisted of paragraphs taken from simple scientific articles, historical accounts, discussions of economic probles, and the like. The test was originally constructed for eighth grade pupils.

  They discovered that the average high-school senior could pass a test designed to measure an achievement proper in the eighth grade. This is ceratainly not a remarkable victory for the high schools. But they also discovered that "a disturbingly large proportion of New York State boys and girls leave the secondary schools, -even go to higher schools,—without having attained a desirable minimum." One must agree with their sentiment when they say that "in skills which everyone must use"—such as areading and writing—"everyone should have at least a minimum of competence." It is clear that Professor Mursell is not using language too strong when he speaks of "the defeat of the schools."

  The Regents' Inquiry investigated the kind of learning which high-school students do by themselves, apart from school and courses. This, they rightly thought, could be determined by their out-of-school reading. And they tell us, from their results, "that once out of school, most boys and girls read soley for recreation, chiefly in magazines of mediocre or inferior fiction and in daily newspapers." The range of their reading, in school and out, is woefully slight and of the simplest and poorest sort. Nonfiction is out of the question. They are not even acquainted with the
best novels published during their years in school. They know the names only of the most obvious best sellers.

  Worse than that, "once out of school, they tend to let books alone. Fewer than 40 per cent. of the boys ans gilrs interviewed had read any book or any part of a book in the two weeks preceding the interviews. Only one in ten had read nonfiction books." For the most part, they read magazines, if anything. And even here the level of their reading is low: "fewer than two young people in a hundred read magazines of the type of Harper's, Scribner's, or The Atlantic Monthly."

  What is the cause of this shocking illiteracy? The Regentsts' Inquiry report points its finger at the heart of the trouboe when it says that "the reading habits of these boys and girls are no doubt directly affected by the fact that many of them have never learned to read understandingly." Some of them "apparently felt that they were completely educated, and that reading was therefore unnecessary." But, for the most part, they do not know how to read, and therefore they do not enjoy reading. The possession of skill is an indispensable condition of its use and enjoyment in its exercise. In the light of what we know about their general inability to read—for understanding and even, in some cases, for information—it is not surprsing to discover the limited range of reading among high-school graduates, and the poor quality of what they do read.

  The serious consequences are obvious. "The inferior quality of reading done by large numbers of these boys and girls," this section of the Regents' report concludes, "offers not great hope that their independent reading will add very much to their educational stature." Nor, from what we know of the achievement in college, is the hope for the college graduate much greater. He is only little more likely to do much serious reading after he graduates, because he only a little more skilled in reading after four more years spent in educational institutions.

  I want to repeat, because I want to remember, that however distressing these findings may seeem, they are not half as bad as they would if the tests were themselves more severe. The tests measure a relatively simple grasp of relatively simple passages. The questions the students being measured must answer after they have read a short paragraph call for very little more than a precise knowledge of what the writer said.

  They do not demand much in the way of interpretation, and almost nothing of critical judgment.

  I say that the tests are not severe enough, but the standard I would set is certainly not too stringent. Is it too much to ask that a student be able to read a whole book, not merely a paragraph, and report not only what was said therein but show an increased understanding of the subject matter being discussed? Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgment if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree? I hardly think that such demands would be exorbitant to make of high school or college, yet if such requirements were incorporated into tests, and a satisfactory performance were the condition of graduation, not one in a hundred students now getting their diplomas each June would wear the cap and gown.

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  You may think that the evidence I have so far presented is local, being restricted to New York and Pennsylvania, or that it places too much weight on the average or poorer high-school student. That is not the case. The evidence represents what is going on in the country generally. The schools of New York and Pennsylvania are better than average.

  And the evidence includes the best high-school seniors, not merely the poorer ones.

  Let me suupse this last statement by one other citation. In June, 1939, the University of Chicago held a four-day conference on reading for teachers attending the summer session. At one of the meetings, Professor Diederich, of the department of education, reported the results of a test given at Chicago to top-notch high-school seniors who came there from all parts of the country to complete for scholarships. Among other things, these candidates were examined in reading. The results, Professor Diederich told the thousand teachers assembled, showd that most of these very "able" students simply could not understand what they read.

  Moreover, he went on to say, "our pupils are not getting very much direct help in understanding what they read or hear, or in knowing what they mean by what they say or write." Nor is the situation limited to high schools. It applied equally to colleges in this country, and even in England concerning the linguistic skill of undergratuates in Cambridge University.

  Why are the students not getting any help? It cannot be because the professional educators are unaware of the situation. That conference at Chicago ran for four days—

  with many papers presented at morning , afternoon, and evening sessions—all on the problem of reading. It must be because the educators simply do not know what to do about it; in addition, perhaps, because they do not realize how much time and effort must expected to teaech students how to read, write, and speak well. Too many other things, of much less importance, have come to clutter up the curriculm.

  Some years ago I had an experience which is illuminating in this connection. Mr.

  Hutchins and I had undertaken to read the great books with a group of hihg-school juniors and seniors in the experimental school which the university runs. This was thought to be a novel "experiment" or worse, a wild idea. Many of these books were not being read by college juniors and seniors. They were reserved for the delectation of graduate students. And we were going to read them with high-school boys and girls!

  At the end of the first year, I went to the principal of the high school to report on our progress. I said that these younger students were clearly interested in reading the books.

  The questions they asked showed that. The acuteness and vitality of their discussion of matters raised in class shoed that they were better than older students who had been dulled by years of listening to lectures, taking notes, and passing examinations. They had much more edge than college seniors or graduate students. But, I said, it was perfectly obvious that they did not know how to read a book. Mr. Hutchins and I, in the few hours a week we had with them, could not discuss the books and also teach them how to read. It was a shame that their native talents were not being to trained to perform a function that was plainly of the highest educational importance.

  "What was the high school doing about teaching students how to read?" I asked. I developed that the principal had been thinking about this matter for some time. He suspected that the students couldn't read very well, but there wasn't time in the program for training them. He enumerated all the more important things they were doing. I refrained from saying that, if the students knew how to read, they could dispense with most of these courses and learn the same thing by reading books. "Anyway," he went on, "even if we had the time, we couldn't do much about reading until the school of education has finished its researches on the sobject."

  I was puzzled. In terms of wha I knew about the art of reading, I could not imagine what kind of experimental research was being done that migh help the students learn to read or their teachers to train them in doing so. I knew the experimental literature on the subject very well. There have been thousands of investigations and countless reports to constitute the "psychology of reading." They deal with eye movements in relation to different kinds of type, page layout, illumination, and so forth. They treat of other aspects of optical mechanics and sensory acuity or disability. They consist of all sorts of tests and measurementss leading to the standardization of achievement at different educational levels. And there have been both laboratory and clinical studies which bear on the emotional aspects of reading. Psychiatrists have found out that some children get into emotional tantrums about reading, as others do about mathematics. Sometimes emotional difficulties seem to cause reading disability; sometimes thy result from it.

  All of this work has, at best, two practical applications. The tests and measurements facilitate school administration, the classification and the gradat
ion of students, the determination of the efficiency of one or another porcedure. The work on emotions and the senses, especially the eye, in its movements and as an organ of vision, has led to the therapeutic program which is part of "remedial reading." But none of this work even begins to touch on the problem of how to teach the young the art of reading well, for enlightment as well as information. I do not mean that the work is useless or unimportant, or that remedial reading may not save a lot of children from the most serious disabilities. I mean only that it has the same relation to making good readers as the development of proper muscular coordination has to the development of a novelist who must use his and eye in penmanship or typewriting.

  One example may make this point clear. Suppose you want to learn how to play tennis.

  You go to a tennis coach for lessons in the art. He looks you over, watches you on the court for while, and then, being an unusually discriminating fellow, he tells you that he connot teach you. You have a corn on your big toe, and papilloma on the ball of one foot. Your posture is generally bad, and you are muscle-bound in your shoulder movements. You need glasses. And, finally, you seem to have jitters whenever the ball comes at you, and a tantrum whenever you miss it.

  Go to a chiropodist and a osteopath.. Have a masseur get you relaxed. Get your eyes attended to, and your emotions straightened out somehow, with or without the aid of psychoanalysis. Do all these things, he says, and then come back and I'ii try to teach you how to play tennis.