Reading as Understanding

It is no secret that today's school teaches the basic technique of reading, but has proven incapable of teaching reading in the proper sense, i.e., the perception of sense, an adequate understanding of the substantive aspect of an integral text. And when, for example, the former schoolchild begins college and is forced to process a huge volume of professional and social literature, he is simply not ready for this. But the most important point is that we do not cultivate the need for reading either in the school or in higher education. M.S. Gordon gathered data—true, 20 years ago—from which it was clear that in the month preceding his study, about 56% of the respondents had read some books. This included 10% who had read four or more books. Among persons with a higher education, this figure even reached 80%. I am afraid that in the past 20 years, the situation has changed for the worse. We were always proud that our people constituted the public that read the most in the world; but we now read in the press comments that, unlike in former days, very few people in today's metro car can be seen reading a book.