Professor Helen Vendler makes the perennial plea:
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. … 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.
(Hat tip: Josh Rothman; Photo: Pie de Amigo (Foot of Friend) by Miler Lagos "an arc of stacked architecture books with one pencil placed in the leaves of each book that, if removed, would cause the whole piece to tumble.")
The Dish 