My history with Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book goes back about 19 years to when I was expecting my second child and reading The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. She mentions Adler’s book (if I remember correctly) and I found an older edition, probably not the one co-authored by Van Doren, at the library. If I actually started it at all, I was soon overwhelmed and sent it back. I could blame it on pregnancy brain, but I probably just wasn’t ready for it. 😉 Amazon says I bought a copy in 2014, which would have been when my daughter started AmblesideOnline Year 7. But I was again turned off (and frankly intimidated) by it and just didn’t think it was the best book for a seventh grader. I think Charlotte Mason might agree with me, because in Formation of Character (pg 380-382) she calls the first 15 years of a child’s life the synthetic stage (characterized by wide and varied reading) and the next stage of education, continuing throughout adulthood, the analytic stage (characterized by more purposeful study and deeper consideration of ideas). She emphasizes that the former stage is necessary to prepare one for the latter stage, and that the habit of wide reading should continue during the analytic stage. As the guidelines in How to Read a Book are called analytical reading, my opinion is that it should be saved until 10th grade or so. (In fairness to the ladies at AmblesideOnline, they do say the book can be started in a later year and they do schedule it slowly over several years.)
So, all that to say I didn’t assign this book to my daughter until the last couple of years of high school and didn’t assign it at all to Mr. D. I did schedule the first half or so for Mr. E last year, although somehow he read more than he was supposed to, and narrations were not consistent (I may have him start back a bit). I decided it was high time I read it myself and that the audiobook would help get me through, which it did. And I was pleasantly surprised by how helpful it is, not only for knowing how to dialogue with a book, but how to dialogue with anyone whose ideas and beliefs are different from your own. (“Dialogue” is my Word of the Year, so anything touching on that idea tends to stand out to me.)
…the person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another. He should always keep before him the possibility that he misunderstands or that he is ignorant on some point. No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
Adler and Van Doren have some strong opinions on how you should read the “Great Books” in particular. I’m not convinced that all their steps have to be done systematically in order to read well – I think they can be done more organically and intuitively. I’m also not sure I agree with their categorization of books in the last chapter (“The Pyramid of Books”) and I ignored the tests in the appendix. But it was good for me to think through their “rules” and it is probably helpful for a teenager who is ready to go deeper with his reading as well. I suppose listening to the audiobook was my “inspectional” read and I will get more out of (and perhaps be chastened in some of my opinions) by a second reading. I was also pleasantly surprised at how they changed the rules for analytical reading to apply to fiction, as I had been a bit worried that they would ruin poetry and novels by over-analysis. But it seemed very much in line with other literary mentors I respect, like those on the Literary Life Podcast.
A work of fine art is “fine” not because it is “refined” or “finished,” but because it is an end (finis, Latin, means end) in itself. It does not move toward some result beyond itself. It is, as Emerson said of beauty, its own excuse for being.
There were even some lines reminiscent of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education, which is not surprising seeing as AmblesideOnline schedules it. In fact, the whole book can be seen as a method of self-education.
A doctor may do many things for his patient, but in the final analysis it is the patient himself who must get well – grow in health. The farmer does many things for his plants or animals, but in the final analysis it is they that must grow in size and excellence. Similarly, although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning. Knowledge must grow in his mind if learning is to take place.
So, I stand corrected about How to Read a Book – guess I should have trusted the AmblesideOnline ladies. 🙂 In fact, I bought my own pretty hardcover copy to “make my own” so my boys can use the “old” paperback without distraction (I don’t mark up books my kids will use as I personally find others’ notes distracting).
Here’s one final quote that I love and thought I’d make pretty – from the science and mathematics chapter, no less!
