Reading is elemental

Helen Vendler advocates the idea of an education system designed around greater levels of reading.

As it is, far too much “learning” is purveyed in elementary and middle schools by worksheets and exercises. These are not natural ways into reading. The natural ways into reading are reading aloud, listening, singing, dancing, reciting, memorizing, performing, retelling what one has read, conversing with others about what has been read, and reading silently. As it is, our students now read effortfully and slowly, and with only imperfect comprehension of what they have seen. They limp into the texts of the humanities (as well as the texts of other realms of learning). I dream of children who have become true readers, who like to sing together, to act together, to read aloud together, and to be read to. After that mastery of reading, the encounter with science textbooks and lab manuals will not daunt them. In college, the history of science will seem a natural bridge to the humanities, and vice versa. Students who read well will look forward to discussing a problem in philosophy or writing a paper in art history. They will be the next humanists—but only if we make them so. And I see no way to do that aside from devoting the first four years of their education, all day, every day (except for a period of mathematics) to reading in all its forms.