My oldest and I are slowly reading through Mortimer Adler’s classic, How to Read a Book. By slowly, I mean we have been reading the book for two years and are on schedule to finish it in two more. It is a book about, you guessed it, learning to read books.
The term ‘read’ in this context means something more significant than decoding phonics and basic comprehension, which Mr. Adler considers the first type of reading. The other types are inspectional reading, analytical reading, and the ultimate process, syntopical reading.
Inspectional reading includes reading the back, the flyleaf, the table of contents, skimming through the book looking at subheadings, sidebars, emboldened words, reading occasional whole passages, and then perusing the index. Mr. Adler says after a proper inspectional reading, a reader ought to be able to determine whether the book deserves more careful consideration.
Analytical reading is going through the entire book from beginning to end, determining the propositions, arguments and solutions offered by the author, and agreeing or disagreeing with him/her.
Syntopical reading, that shining star of the reading world, is analytically engaging several books at once, drawing logical conclusions that may be inferred by the reading of the several books, but not singly contained in any one of them. We aspire to syntopical reading. :O)
This book is listed in the Ambleside Online curriculum’s House of Education section under the subject heading, “Logic”. I wondered about that for the first year. The first section of the book basically defines the term ‘reading’ for the reader, and although Mr. Adler thinks in a logical manner, I didn’t see how this was instructing us in Logic. But we are almost through the second section now, and I begin to see the logic coming through in his detailed explanation of analytical reading. In fact, his emphasis on defining terms, determining important sentences, and drawing out arguments reminds me of the year Triss spent in debate.
A friend lent us a proper Logic Program to use this year, as Triss is going on fifteen and has never been formally instructed in logic (except that brief foray into debate). I think the workbook exercises will be good for Triss. But this book on reading might help her even more. What better exercise is there than reading a worthy author, discovering and delineating his propositions, arguments, and solutions, and ‘talking back’?
