Sleep-Reader: Yes Mom, I Did My Homework

Your final paragraph says ". . .must be more than literate", but it goes on to describe what I mean by saying some is a literate person.

I do hope I'm not falling into the trap of making words mean just what I want them to.

Are you an educator coberst?

My child is in 4th grade and every week the children read
a chapter book (each individually) and afterwards they give
an oral report of the subject matter.

This method has sparked an interest in reading (at least with
my child) and she's reading quite a few books at home as
well. I'm told her classmates do the same.

Now, I don't think this is just an isolated case, in general there is an emphasis on reading again.

Dear Chuck-

The higher levels of literacy demand for their attainment a degree of discipline which is beyond the scope of the bulk of the population in the same way that the higher levels of mathematics are.

I fear once again that you are suggesting here that the level you yourself have attained is a satisfactory one and yet you make no mention of seeing the jokes or of allusions which call into being realms of appreciation beyond the sentence being considered.

If your ambition is simply to raise us lesser mortals up to a standard where we can comprehend instruction manuals and suchlike all well and good but that is not real literacy such as one finds in,say,Finnegan's Wake or the major works of Flaubert.

I am not a teacher but I am very concerned about education in its extrinsic and intrinsic values. Most parents, justifiable so, are concerned that there child goes to college and thereby achieves a higher standard of living, i.e. makes more money. This I think is a worthy goal but I think we are not sufficiently conscious of the cost of concentrating on this aspect of learning.

Learning has also an intrinsic value that our society has pushed so far into the background that most people cannot any long understand the meaning of education and intrinsic value.

If we examine the Renaissance we will see that the rebirth that happened at that time was a rebirth of learning that had been lost during the Middle or Dark ages. This rebirth of learning gave rise to the term Renaissance Man. The Renaissance Person, as I prefer it, was one who had a critical understanding of many domains of knowledge. This is what I think our society badly needs. We need vast numbers of people accepting the responsibility for carrying forth the great legacy we were given by those generations who came before us.

As mentioned in the OP literacy is the ability to mouth words. To be a good reader is much more than that. Since our schools are doing what the society seems to want they, the teachers, are trying to mass produce literate persons. But we adults are failing in our responsibility in not becoming better than literate but becoming good readers.

I think any fair minded person must agree with me that our society is filled with sleep-readers. And they learned that in school but that does not mean that one must go to the grave as such. We have a bad habit of thinking that learning ends when schooling ends.

Any person with normal intelligence is capable of becomeing a good reader. This an't rocket science.

coberst wrote-



Well that is not in agreement with Spengler who had a few things to say about the Renaissance.

For example-

"But the Renaissance,when it had mastered some arts of words and pictures,had shot its bolt.It altered the ways of thought and the life-feeling of West Europe not one whit.It could penetrate as far as costume and gesture,but the roots of life it could not touch--even in Italy the world outlook of the Baroque is essentially a continuation of the Gothic."

At one point he says-

"The Art of the Renaissance....is a revolt against the spirit of the Faustian forest-music of counterpoint."

and again-

"It never disavowed its origin and it maintained the character of a simple counter-movement;necessarily therefore it remained dependent upon the forms of the original (pagan) movement,and represented simply the effect of these upon a hesitant soul."

Somewhere else he refers to it as an "illusion".

To comprehend fiction and non fiction requires that the reader use two different reading methods. Fiction is creative writing and generally requires the reader to move page by page from beginning to end.

Non fiction reading is an entirely different animal. Generally a non fiction book has at most 15 % of its content to be new stuff. The reader who is completely new to that domain of knowledge might read from the first page to the last, but such is unusual. Most readers of non fiction are reading with a question and scan the contents looking for things that might help supply an answer to that question.

The good reader must learn to develop questions if s/he wishes to read efficiently. Our schools have not prepared us to be good readers and it is something that we must do for our self.

Let the question be your guide to good readership.