Education: How and What to Read

As attested by the popularity of speed-reading courses, many people think that reading better means simply reading faster. To Mortimer J. Adler, who for 32 years has been teaching Americans How to Read a Book, great speed is of value "only if what you have to read is really not worth reading." To keep serious readers from becoming "literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well," he wrote his self-help guide, which over the years has sold more than 420,000 copies. Now, for the post-television generation, he has produced a new version of the book, which is almost completely rewritten but still carries the old message: "If we are disposed to go on learning and discovering, we must know how to make books teach us well."

At 69, Adler has spent much of his career pigeonholing books and, in one way or another, teaching people how to read them. With Robert M. Hutchins, former chancellor of the University of Chicago, he winnowed Western thought into Great Books of the Western World, a 54-volume set of 443 works by 74 authors (from Homer to Freud), which was published in 1952. To help readers explore those works, he classified man's search for wisdom into 102 basic ideas (from "Angel" to "World") and fashioned an index which he called the Syntopicon, meaning "collection of topics." It directs a reader exploring the ideas to every mention of them in the Great Books, plus the Bible.

More recently, he has directed his own Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago in dissecting each of the 102 basic ideas. So far it has published volumes on Freedom, Love, Justice, Happiness and Progress, and now Adler and two researchers are exploring Equality.

Serious Failure. Grasping such ideas requires skillful reading, but Adler finds that U.S. schools stop teaching reading by the sixth grade. To Adler, this is a serious failure, for he believes that only reading well can provide a continuing education, and that the skills it requires—keen observation, wide imagination and reflective analysis —can all be taught. His How to Read a Book was an attempt to do precisely that. In the new edition (Simon & Schuster; $8.95), Adler has added material on novels and poetry as well as syntopical reading (how to read two or more books on the same subject). The book was written in collaboration with Charles Van Doren, 46, the onetime English instructor and Quiz Whiz who came to grief in the TV scandals of 1958-59. In recent years Van Doren has been working with Adler, editing and conducting great books discussion groups.

Adler recommends that a reader skim a book, deciding in an hour or less whether it is worth reading. If so, he should read it quickly to gain an overall impression. Then, if it is a book that will increase his understanding, he should reread it slowly, applying 15 rules of analysis. (Sample: "Know the author's arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of sequences of sentences.") Adler's method also requires the reader to underline key statements, make marginal notes and outline the main points on the end papers. Such notations will not only help him get the most out of a book but make subsequent reading more rewarding, for to Adler a great book is "endlessly rereadable."