'Listening is learning from a teacher who is present - a living teacher - while reading is learning from one who is absent!'

The Present & the Absent Teacher

I’m really freaking out big-time on Mortimer’s How to Read a Book.

I’m sure it will be of immense use to those of us who engage with students [especially at the UG level,] to inculcate and to instill in them the ‘pleasures and the joys unlimited’ that one obtains by connecting with the art of reading.

In this particular episode, Mortimer talks about the Present and the Absent Teacher!

Look at his lovely line na – that we could frame it on our classrooms as well, I guess!

Listening is learning from a teacher who is present - a living teacher - while reading is learning from one who is absent!

And then he proceeds to give us an introduction to the four levels of reading!

Simply awesome! Simply mind-blowing!

So here goes –

How to Read a Book

The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

By

Mortimer J Adler &

Charles Van Doren

Present and Absent Teachers

Listening to a course of lectures, for example, is in many respects like reading a book; and listening to a poem is like reading it. We have been proceeding as if reading and listening could both be treated as learning from teachers.

To some extent that is true.

Both are ways of being instructed, and for both one must be skilled in the art of being taught.

Listening to a course of lectures, for example, is in many respects like reading a book; and listening to a poem is like reading it.

Yet there is good reason to place primary emphasis on reading, and let listening become a secondary concern.

The reason is that listening is learning from a teacher who is present - a living teacher - while reading is learning from one who is absent.

If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you.

If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself.

In this respect a book is like nature or the world.

When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking and analysis yourself.

THE LEVELS OF READING

There are four levels of reading.

The first level of reading we will call Elementary Reading.

Other names might be rudimentary reading, basic reading or initial reading; any one of these terms serves to suggest that as one masters this level one passes from nonliteracy to at least beginning literacy.

In mastering this level, one learns the rudiments of the art of reading, receives basic training in reading, and acquires initial reading skills.

We prefer the name elementary reading, however, because this level of reading is ordinarily learned in elementary school.

The child's first encounter with reading is at this level.

His problem then (and ours when we began to read) is to recognize the individual words on the page.

The child sees a collection of black marks on a white ground (or perhaps white marks on a black ground, if he is reading from a blackboard); what the marks say is, "The cat sat on the hat."

The first grader is not really concerned at this point with whether cats do sit on hats, or with what this implies about cats, hats, and the world.

He is merely concerned with language as it is employed by the writer.

The second level of reading we will call Inspectional Reading.

It is characterized by its special emphasis on time.

When reading at this level, the student is allowed a set time to complete an assigned amount of reading.

He might be allowed fifteen minutes to read this book, for instance-or even a book twice as long.

Hence, another way to describe this level of reading is to say that its aim is to get the most out of a book within a given time-usually a relatively short time, and always (by definition) too short a time to get out of the book everything that can be gotten.

Still another name for this level might be skimming or pre-reading.

However, we do not mean the kind of skimming that is characterized by casual or random browsing through a book.

Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically.

When reading at this level, your aim is to examine the surface of the book, to learn everything that the surface alone can teach you.

That is often a good deal.

Whereas the question that is asked at the first level is "What does the sentence say?" the question typically asked at this level is "What is the book about?"

That is a surface question; others of a similar nature are "What is the structure of the book?'' or "What are its parts?''

Upon completing an inspectional reading of a book, no matter how short the time you had to do it in, you should also be able to answer the question,

"What kind of book is it-a novel, a history, a scientific treatise?"

The third level of reading we will call Analytical Reading.

It is both a more complex and a more systematic activity than either of the two levels of reading discussed so far.

Depending on the difficulty of the text to be read, it makes more or less heavy demands on the reader.

Analytical reading is thorough reading, complete reading, or good reading-the best reading you can do.

If inspectional reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given a limited time, then analytical reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given unlimited time.

The analytical reader must ask many, and organized, questions of what he is reading.

On this level of reading, the reader grasps a book-the metaphor is apt - and works at it until the book becomes his own.

Francis Bacon once remarked that "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

We also want to stress that analytical reading is hardly ever necessary if your goal in reading is simply information or entertainment.

Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding.

Conversely, bringing your mind with the aid of a book from a condition of understanding less to one of understanding more is almost impossible unless you have at least some skill in analytical reading.

The fourth and highest level of reading we will call Syntopical Reading.

It is the most complex and systematic type of reading of all.

It makes very heavy demands on the reader, even if the materials he is reading are themselves relatively easy and unsophisticated.

Another name for this level might be comparative reading.

When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve. But mere comparison of texts is not enough.

Syntopical reading involves more.

With the help of the books read, the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books.

It is obvious, therefore, that syntopical reading is the most active and effortful kind of reading.

Let it suffice for the moment to say that syntopical reading is not an easy art, and that the rules for it are not widely known.

Nevertheless, syntopical reading is probably the most rewarding of all reading activities.

The benefits are so great that it is well worth the trouble of learning how to do it.

To be continued…