Reading, for our purposes, might be divided into two broad categories: Learning to read and Reading to learn.

A.  Learning to read

I am stating the obvious when I assert that one’s information-gathering opportunities are severely set back if one is unable to read. Unfortunately, today, many cannot read.

Adults who cannot read

50 million adult Americans cannot read. They cannot read a newspaper; a legal contract; a job application; or many traffic signs.

Their employment opportunities, at best, are limited; sometimes, non-existent.

They use the internet, if at all, with great difficulty. And those suffering under this affliction are not likely to be reading this page.

If someone you love endures this kind of restriction in life, I would be willing to work with them – probably, in partnership with you - to help them to a better path.

Children who cannot read

Teach your baby to read

CLICK HERE for a discussion on early childhood education, The Story of Young Cavalin!

The Many Faces of Reading Instruction

Thirty years ago, as I prepared for the arrival of my children, and while working on teaching licensure, I researched the best methods of teaching reading.

I discovered many inspiring stories, dramatic examples, of teaching and learning reading under difficult circumstances. I remember a very moving account of a teacher working with primitive native peoples in New Zealand. She devised an ingenious method of teaching reading skills to adults and children, ones still living in a stone-age culture! It is a wonderful, simple but clever, procedure that I used with my own very young children.

In 1982 I bought a copy of a new book, Marva Collins’ Way. Marva is a super-hero teacher, whose work was featured in a movie. She accepted castaways from the public school system, Chicago ghetto-kids deemed to be uneducable, and turned them into good students; in some cases, top students! How inspiring!

I spoke with Marva on the phone and asked her questions about her methods. I purchased her materials and built my 2nd grade classroom around her philosophy. My supervising teacher, head of the education department at a nearby university, confided in me that, even though I was a new teacher, my classroom was the best in the school.

Marva’s methods are excellent for any would-be reader, from grade one to adulthood.

B. Reading to Learn

1982 was a year of important discovery for me. The September 6th issue of Time featured an article about Dr. Mortimer Adler. Philosopher, professor, lawyer, historian, author of nearly 100 books, Mortimer Adler would become one of the most influential teachers of my life. I own a small library of his books and videos. Today, I frequently quote him in my articles.

I still have that original Time essay, tucked into one of Adler’s books. This now-fading parchment so magnetically drew me to this great teacher of the 20th century, his thoughts resonating deeply within my psyche. He spoke of history’s Great Books and Great Ideas; of how general learning should be the possession of all human beings. And one of his favorite quotes became one of mine:

• "The education that I propose includes all that is proper for a man and it is one in which all men who are born into this world should share. ... Our first wish is that all men be educated fully to full humanity, not any one individual, not a few, nor even many, but all men together and singly, young and old, rich and poor, of high and lowly birth, men and women - in a word, all those whose fate it is to be born human beings, so that at last the whole of the human race become educated, men of all ages, all conditions, both sexes, and all nations." John Amos Comenius (1657)

How inspiring are these words of Comenius… ahead of his time… in 1657!

But I want to tell you about something that Adler wrote in 1940… one of the most important works of our time… entitled, How To Read A Book.

It begins enigmatically:

“This is a book for readers who cannot read. That may sound rude, but I do not mean to be. It may sound like a contradiction, but it is not… The reader who has read thus far surely can read, in some sense of the word… this book is intended for those who can read in some sense but not in others. There are many kinds of reading and degrees of ability to read.”

Adler’s book is about reading for understanding; and, in this sense, there are many, even with advanced college degrees, who cannot read.

Adler, as he explains, had graduated from Columbia University, a top student; and he was asked to teach a course on the classics. He had already read a hundred of these famous works and looked forward to discussing them with students. But, as he reread these works, he realized that, during his time as a Columbia student, he hadn’t understood them.

Learning to read, and reading to learn, cannot be mastered in the first few years of grade school; indeed, not even in high school, and probably not even in college. As Dr. Adler explains, becoming an excellent reader, more than acquiring technical skills, is a function of something else.

One thing is certain… you cannot rise to the top of your chosen field unless you master the communication-art of reading.

Personal Postscript:
 

The Grand Lady Who Taught Me To Read

There is a word from ancient Greek literature - apotheosis. Notice the root, theos. You've seen it in "theology," as it means "god." 

Apotheosis, for the Greeks, meant turning a mere mortal into a god! transforming ordinary flesh-and-blood into the power and glory of divinity!

Learning to read is your ticket to apotheosis! It doesn't matter where you grew up; who you know, or don't know; whether you have money, or need some - none of that matters if you become a world-class reader! because, if you can do that, every secret that this world might jealously guard, will disgorge and open itself to you! and you will transform yourself into a person of knowledge... and the light of intelligence will shine from your eyes!

My children would tell you of my "100 book principle." I told them that if you read 100 books, on any subject, you will, at the end, find yourself in an elite group of knowing more about that subject than 99% of all others! More apotheosis.

See the little first-grader above, the one almost too shy to look at the camera. He's standing by a master of the art of reading pedagogy, my dear Sister Reingundas.

How strange to me now! that I, in such unlikely place, should have been so fortuitously bestowed with her teaching presence! Yes, how strange, in a small North Dakota village, in a community that ostensibly honored farmwork more than phonics, I should have been so blessed to receive - what I, now, as a professional in the field, deem to have been - a world-class learning-to-read experience!

Look at the photo again. Look at how she's fussing, doting, over me. Skillful instructional methods, while so vital, without more, will not take you far enough on that path to becoming a top reader. You need to become convinced of the dignity and honor of your own Inner Person - a theme I address, again and again, in all of my Personal Statements.

More than 50 years after the fact, I still feel the warmth of Sister's Person; her sweet affirmation of my Being; her subtle acceptance, and unspoken encouragement, that this awkward little boy in cowboy boots, now, having learned to read with the very best, might one day discover that he could gain insights, demystify the enigmatic, challenge any idea, and become anything he might choose to be... that, more than mere reading instruction, was her gift to me.