How to Read a Book deserves its excellent reputation, primarily because of the distinctions and suggestions it makes and an underlying theme. Adler and Van Doren explain that different types of books should be read differently -- and some books should be read more than once. Part Three, Approaches to Different Kinds of  Reading Matter," goes into this in more detail. Like the rest of the book, it illustrates the important underlying theme: good readers read actively -- they constantly ask questions about the text as a whole, and about many, if not most of the details.
     The authors distinguish four "levels" of reading -- 1.) Elementary Reading, 2.) Inspectional Reading, 3.) Analytical Reading, and 4.) Syntopical Reading. These levels create a hierarchy that reflects the different types of questions that can be posed by a reader at each level. In addition to what one might expect, the discussion of "Elementary Reading" briefly surveys historical approaches to teaching reading.
     "Inspectional Reading," the second level, essentially is skimming a book to get a general idea of what it is about and where it is going. The purpose of this is twofold. For one, it enables a reader to decide if the book is worth reading again at the higher levels. Second, even a quick reading helps the reader get a better sense of the author's purpose and what he is trying to say. This is excellent advice for both novice and experienced readers. I have, for example, started reading Plato's Gorgias twice -- and twice stopped in frustration. But this book has prepared me for a third attempt, this time as "Inspectional Reading." As the authors say:

Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all: it is the essence of inspectional reading. Do not be afraid to be, or to seem to be, superficial. Race through even the hardest book. You will then be prepared to read it well the second time. (43)

You must be able to read an author's text more or less steadily, without having to stop to look up the meaning of many words, and without stumbling over the grammar and syntax. (31)

. . . we will assume that you know some grammar. We do not necessarily mean that you must understand everything about syntax, but you should be concerned about the ordering of words in sentences and their relations to one another. [This is one of the KISS advantages.] Some knowledge of grammar is indispensable to a reader. You cannot begin to deal with terms, propositions, and arguments -- the elements of thought -- until you can penetrate beneath the surface of language. (120)

     Once more, you cannot do this [discover propositions] very well unless you know a little grammar. You must know the role that adjectives and adverbs play, how verbs function in relation to nouns, how modifying words and clauses restrict or amplify the meaning of the words they modify, and so forth. (125)

If we are puzzled by the syntax of a sentence, we are . . . working at the elementary level. Only when we have solved these problems can we go on to read at higher levels. (261)

Where there is unresolved ambiguity in communication, there is no communication, or at best communication must be incomplete. . . . For the communication to be successfully completed, . . . it is necessary for the two parties to use the same words with the same meanings -- in short, to come to terms. (97)

     Leigh Bortins is the founder and CEO of Classical Conversations, Inc., a support group for Christian homeschoolers. I still have my doubts about home schooling in general, but Bortins' The Core illustrates some tremendous advantages that homeschoolers may have. The most important of these is an integrated grade-level to grade-level curriculum in which one year builds on what was previously learned. As I have mentioned elsewhere, at the first conference of what is now the NCTE Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar, presentations on how to teach the parts of speech were given by primary, middle, and high school teachers, and by college instructors. In other words, in our current public (and probably many private) school systems, instruction begins at the same beginning, year after year, and it apparently goes nowhere.
     As a whole, this book is well worth reading, and not only for homeschoolers, but also for people interested in improving public education. Four things in Bortins' philosophy of education particularly impressed me. First is her emphasis on memorization and over-learning. Throughout the book she stresses that basic concepts need to be practiced, practiced, and practiced until they become automatic. This is an underlying principle of KISS Grammar. But Bortins extends this by using "grammar" in two different meanings -- the grammar of the English language, and the grammar (basic concepts) of any field of study -- history, math, science, etc. 
     Second is her push for having students read classical (difficult) texts. The works that she mentions as reading for students are impressive, and she even implies that students should read Darwin's The Origin of Species (193). She tip-toes around the question of teaching evolution, but this may be because she is attempting to sell books and conferences to her primarily Christian audience. (Many Christians, of course, accept the theory of evolution, but others actually take their children out of public schools simply so that their children will not be exposed to it.)
     Third, Bortins stresses regular, frequent, even daily writing. I love the way she focusses on correctness of spelling, correct grammar, and basic writing formats. She suggests that early in their writing students should simply copy samples of good writing, which is not a bad idea. In their early writing, she correctly downplays "originality." She is probably reacting to a twenty-plus year trend in public education that stresses "originality" even in the writing of very young students. But as Bortins notes, originality will come of itself later -- once students' minds are stocked with facts (and I would add "frames of reference" -- See below.) In essence, she is agreeing with Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein in their They Say / I Say.
     Fourth is her regular reminders to parents that they should learn with their children. Here I agree and disagree. New users of KISS Grammar often tell me that they want to "brush up on grammar" before they begin teaching their children. My general response to this is that they should jump in at KISS Level 1.1 and learn with their children. I do, however, suggest that they should first at least browse the How to Use KISS Grammar, the Background Essays, and the KISS Psycholinguistic Model. All three of these provide context, direction, and a theoretical background for teaching grammar. They provide what William Perry, in his humorous, somewhat difficult, but fundamentally important essay, "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts: A Study in Educational Epistemology" calls "frames of reference." In essence, Perry argues that an educated mind is not just a storehouse for facts. He labels facts per se as "cow" -- "(pure): data, however relevant, without relevancies." 
     For Perry, an educated mind knows how to "bull" (in a positive sense of that word). He defines the noun "bull" as "(pure): relevancies, however relevant, without data." Later he defines it as a verb -- "To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any." Perry is surely correct that understanding "contexts, frames of reference and points of observation" is crucial. These, however, cannot be learned at the same time that the child is learning them. Indeed, they should determine what the teacher plans on teaching and why.
     Perhaps because she is reacting to the almost total lack of requirements for memorizing basic facts and concepts, Bortins appears to stress what Perry calls "cow," and I never got the sense that she appreciates Perry's "bull." I may be wrong. Perry, I should note, states that the best thinking is a "marriage" of cow and bull" -- both are necessary.
     As users of KISS Grammar might expect, the only other serious question I have about Bortins' text is her approach to teaching grammar. She is infatuated by Warriner's English Grammar and Composition (32). But Warriner's is a very simplistic text. Like most textbooks, it teaches the "parts," but really does not address how the parts fit together. Bortins admits, however, that she started teaching with a woeful lack of knowledge about grammar. She loves parsing sentences, but she is not completely clear about how she does it. Thus she states, "parsing just means to reduce a whole to its parts and identify them" (58). She gives a few examples, but they are all very simplistic. It would be very interesting to see how she has students parse longer, more complicated sentences.
     Her discussion of the "Structure of English" (118-124) is likewise simplistic and at times prescriptively wrong. Thus she claims that "All compound sentences have commas before conjunctions. Jack and Jill are nice, but I am nicer." (124) Anyone working at KISS Level 3 (clauses) should be looking at sentences from randomly selected real texts. They will see that many good writers often use a comma in this situation, but in many cases they do not. By what authority does Bortins tell students that they have to?
     Obviously, I have qualms about Bortins' approach to the grammar of the English language, but then I am not recommending her book as a grammar textbook. The book has many very important things to say about what education as a whole should look like.

     I bought this book to get free shipping when I purchased Finnish Lessons. It was a good purchase. Brill explores the political battles that plague our educational system. For me, it was a totally new, and very interesting perspective. He also makes a case for public charter schools. (I didn't know that such schools exist.) I recommend the book to everyone interested in the reform battle, but the book raises more questions than it answers.
     As Finnish Lessons argues, good teachers are very important, but Brill under-defines and over-rates the teachers' roles in our educational problems. Most of the teachers he discusses are K-5, and I doubt that I would want to work for any of them. Read the book for yourself, but what I saw was some every enthusiastic, dedicated, basically untrained, "lead" teachers who feel as if they can tell all the other teachers how to teach. I'm sure that the attitude of the public charter school teachers adds to the success of their students, especially the emphasis that every child is capable of learning, but Brill doesn't appear to be aware of the problems faced by many public school teachers.
     He does strongly undercut the opposition's argument that charters cull the "cream of the crop." Students get into public charter school by lottery. Although Brill acknowledges the fact that these students' parents are concerned about their children's education (whereas not all parents are), he doesn't seem to grasp the implications. Students in public charters are well-behaved and do their homework. My question is, what happens if they misbehave and/or don't do the homework? My guess is that they do not stay in the charter school. Brill doesn't discuss this.
     The biggest problem in our public schools is that students often misbehave and many rarely do homework. And they get passed on from one grade to the next. Teachers are not to blame for this. I've heard many a story from (or about) teachers who believed a student should fail and not be passed on to the next grade. But the teachers are usually over-ruled. The students, of course, realize this--and the next year they misbehave more and do even less, in or out of class. This aspect of the "system" raises major problems for both the teachers and the students. A seventh grade teacher, for example, may have to teach students who are reading anywhere from the third-grade level to the eleventh. The students who are reading below grade level either don't care or are totally lost. The students who are well above grade level are bored. You try teaching in these conditions.

     Gardner is most famous for his 1983 Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In it he argues that there are different types of intelligence, for example, the mathematical, musical, and muscular. That book is important, but I would suggest that The Unschooled Mind is more important. Here, he shifts his focus from the differences in intelligence, to the differences in academic disciplines. As he says, "Stated simply, I believe that the primary intellectual mission of pre-collegiate education ought to be to inculcate in students the capacities to think in the ways that characterize the major scholarly disciplines." (xiii) He explains this beautifully in the next few pages, but what he means, for example, is that scientists think differently than historians--they ask different questions and require different kinds of proof. Experiments, for example, can prove or disprove scientific studies, but a historian cannot conduct experiments.
     I cannot do his explanation justice, but he also claims that it takes several years to become proficient in a discipline--to think like a scientist (of a specific kind) or like a historian, etc. An interesting point that he makes is that the "cross-disciplinary" courses in our high schools are really not disciplinary at all. He calls them "thematic," because the students (and the teachers?) do not have the training to think as a historian, biologist, or whatever other disciplines are involved. In essence, the courses become fact centered. Gardner is clearly opposed to the testing mania--the tests cannot evaluate understanding, and Gardner argues that how to understand is what we should be teaching. The third part of the book is "Toward Education for Understanding."
     The first part of the book, I should note, is "The 'Natural' Learner." In it, Gardner explores how we conceptualize the world for ourselves before we enter formal schooling. We learn a lot--in a lot of different ways. How this learning confronts school learning is another important theme throughout the book.
     I have had this book listed on this page (with the picture) for over a year--with a small "Forthcoming" instead of a review. As I write this now, I understand why I could not write the review then. The book is too good and too systematic to be summarized in a review. 

     Because my students find this essay difficult to understand, I have written a somewhat lengthy explication. Click here to get it.

     This may seem like an odd addition to a collection of book reviews on education, but Riesman and his colleagues present a huge historical perspective that sheds light on our current problems with discipline and standards. It requires a longer review, so if you are interested, click here.

     Several years ago I happened to catch a T.V. documentary comparing education in the U.S. with that in Korea and Finland, both of which are acknowledged world leaders in education. What caught my attention were the first words out of the mouth of a Finnish teacher--"We teach our students to be Finnish citizens." That is worlds away from the U.S. focus on going to school to get a job, and I still believe that the "job" focus is the major problem in U.S. education. Many of my students tell me that learning to write (or read), learning about history, government, and social issues are all not important to their reasons for going to college. Thus they are disengaged--Sahlberg mentions "Lack of engagement [as] the main reason for the challenges that teachers face in schools and classrooms today" (142-3). It's the truth. One cannot teach people who do not care to be taught, and "motivating" them with songs, dances, and undeserved praise not only does not work--it devalues education. For education to work well, society as a whole has to value it.
    Years later, having read an article about Sahlberg's book, I put it on my reading list. He makes good arguments. The most interesting to me is that schools cannot effectively be changed from the top down. The obsession with standards and testing, he rightly notes, is harmful. He explains that teachers in Finland are better trained and more respected. This struck me. My perception is that in the U.S. parents generally respect the teachers in our schools, but within the profession, teachers are not respected--even by those at the "top" of our educational hierarchies. 
     Other things of interest are that education in Finland is basically free--straight through college. (But one needs to pass an exam to get into college.) Their view, and I agree with it, is that free education provides "social capital." In other words, a poor child who cannot get a good education will not be able to contribute the new inventions, ideas, or social engagement that the freely educated poor child can. Objections have been made to what Sahlberg calls "the Finnish way"--the main one is that Finland is small and basically homogeneous. He addresses them fairly well, but I have to question his explanations for Finland's success.
     Sahlberg regularly emphasizes the importance of the Finnish "welfare state." (For many in the U.S., the very idea of a "welfare" state is obnoxious.) Sahlberg never explains how Finland became a welfare state, but I would suggest that it did so because the country is historically Lutheran. (Sahlberg never mentions religion.) According to Wikipedia, in 2013, 75% of Finns were Lutheran; in 2000, 85%; and in 1900, 98%.
     In The Cultural Significance of the Reformation (N.Y.: Living Age Books, 1959), Karl Holl traces the "first seed for the development of the welfare state" to Martin Luther. It appears from Holl that Luther was strongly anti-capitalistic (89). According to Holl, Luther felt that primary duties of the Church should be to educate people to read (so they could read the Bible), and to take care of the poor--including the lower middle class that exists on the edge of poverty. "Luther conceived  this obligation on a magnanimous scale." (91-2) Holl quotes from Luther's "Sermon on St. Stephen's Day" (1523): "But we do not have the men for it; therefore I do not dare begin until the Lord God makes some Christians." (93, 185) As a result, he assigned these two obligations to the state--the "first seed" of the welfare state. 
     Another reason for Finland's educational success that Sahlberg notes but probably under-emphasizes is that Finns have historically been avid readers. Reading really is fundamental in everything from technical work to history and politics. And, as I argue on the KISS site, mastery of the syntax of the written word--the ability to decode the complex sentence structure--can only be gained in two ways--from reading itself, or from formal instruction. But once gained, such mastery easily transfers across all areas--from technical to political. One of the basic problems of education in the U.S. is that we put students who are reading at the fourth grade level into tenth grade classes. Those students are sunk, but we still pass them on to the next grade. My point here, of course, is that Finland may have succeeded in large part because its people read. (Sahlberg notes, with worries, that they are reading less than they used to.)
     Sahlberg's book is good, but I'm not sure that I would recommend it. As I've stated, it addresses very important questions, but it is repetitive and, from my perspective, focuses too much on the administrative changes. We are told, for example, that Finland has a well-developed system of support for students with academic and other problems, but there is little detail of how it works. We are told that teachers get degrees that focus on their subject areas, but the descriptions are never clear as to what, exactly, they learn about the subject area (as opposed to the teaching of it). Sahlberg repeatedly refers to the importance of "cognitive" learning (as opposed to learning "facts"), but how that works is never illustrated. My previous discussion of Lutheranism as a possible major factor in Finland's success leads me to wonder if and how Finland deals with questions such as climate change and evolution, questions that are highly divisive in the U.S. (I've had a number of students tell me that their parents homeschooled them because they--the parents--did not want their children to learn about evolution.)
     I may, of course, be asking for too much, but the book is rather expensive as I write this (Amazon $32.26; Kindle $19.22). And, in dealing with such an extremely complex topic, one can only cover tips of icebergs (as did my comments). Still, anyone who is really involved in improving education in the U.S. should probably read this book.