Quotes from Mortimer J. Adler

Skimming or pre-reading is the first sublevel of inspectional reading. Your main aim is to discover whether the book requires a more careful reading.

Every book, no matter how difficult, contains interstitial material that can be and should be read quickly; and every good book also contains matter that is difficult and should be read very slowly.

Os gregos tinham um nome especial nome especial para essa estranha mistura de aprendizado e estupidez - um nome que pode ser aplicado aos literatos ignorantes de todas as eras. Eles chamavam esse fenômeno de sofomania.

But we could not live in this world if we were not able, from time to time, to get away from it.

2. STUDY THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

3. CHECK THE INDEX

4. If the book is a new one with a dust jacket, READ THE PUBLISHER'S BLURB.

We must be more than a nation of functional literates. We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies. Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming.

outside help should be sought whenever a book remains unintelligible to you, either in whole or part, after you have done your best to read it according to the rules of intrinsic reading.

A descoberta está para o ensino assim como o aprendizado sem professor está para o aprendizado com professor.

Without external help of any sort, you go to work on the book. With nothing but the power of your own mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more. Such elevation, accomplished by the mind working on a book, is highly skilled reading, the kind of reading that a book which challenges your understanding deserves.

Many persons believe that they know how to read because they read at different speeds. But they pause and go slow over the wrong sentences. They pause over the sentences that interest them rather than the ones that puzzle them.

6. Finally, TURN THE PAGES, DIPPING IN HERE AND THERE, READING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO, SOMETIMES SEVERAL PAGES IN SEQUENCE, NEVER MORE THAN THAT.

Common is not the same as universal.

Ensino é] descoberta com auxílio

o professor consegue fazer muita coisa pelos seus alunos, mas quem tem que aprender são eles. O conhecimento só frutifica na mente deles caso o aprendizado ocorra.

There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.

Contanto somente como o poder de sua mente, você tem de operar os símbolos que estão diante de você a fim de elevar-se do estado de entendimento inferior ao estado de entendimento superior. Essa elevação consiste em uma leitura criteriosa - o tipo de leitura que todo o livro desafiador merece.

If one could enumerate all the essentials which a sound educational program consider, I would say that the techniques of communication, which make for literacy, are our first obligation, and more so in a cemocracy than in any other kind of society, because it depends on a literate electorate.

1. WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE?

2. WHAT IS BEING SAID IN DETAIL, AND HOW?

I. SURVEYING THE FIELD PREPARATORY TO SYNTOPICAL READING 1. Create a tentative bibliography of your subject by recourse to library catalogues, advisors, and bibliographies in books. 2. Inspect all of the books on the tentative bibliography to ascertain which are germane to your subject, and also to acquire a clearer idea of the subject.

3. IS THE BOOK TRUE, IN WHOLE OR PART?

Every book has a skeleton hidden between its covers. Your job as an analytical reader is to find it.