In Praise of "Slow Reading"

An AP news story yesterday ("NH Professor Pushes for Return to Slow Reading," by Holly Ramer, June 17, 2010) describes the "Slow Reading" movement, which now has many proponents, and focuses on one professor's efforts. Professor Thomas Newkirk of the University of New Hampshire says that "students have told him they've become accustomed to flitting from page to page online and that they have trouble concentrating while reading printed books." To help counter this problem, Newkirk "is encouraging schools from elementary through college to return to old strategies such as reading aloud and memorization...to help students truly 'taste' the words." I am, as you might guess, very much in support of this movement. As I was reading this article, my thoughts flashed back to my beloved 8th grade teacher, Mr. George Fisher, and how he would have us memorize poems. Sometimes we resisted this assignment, but we enjoyed it too, and felt proud of being able to recite the poems. Learning a poem "by heart" does indeed, as Newkirk says, promote "tasting" the words. One poem that Mr. Fisher had us memorize that sticks in my mind still, although I can no longer recite more than a few lines, is "The Brook," by Alfred Lord Tennyson. "I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glide.../For men may come and men may go/But I go on forever."