What do Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter have in common aside from having served as President of the Unites States?

1. The were all Republicans.
2. They were all Democrats.
3. They are all on Mount Rushmore.
4. They were all speedreaders.

The answer is 4.  All of these Presidents were speed readers.  Rumor has it that George Washington and Abe Lincoln were also speedreaders–but we really don’t know.   The Roosevelts were self-taught; whereas, Kennedy and Carter took speed reading classes.  Jimmy Carter participated in speed reading classes at the White House with his wife Rosalynn and daughter Amy and read two books a week even with his busy schedule.  Kennedy took speed reading classes with his brother Bobby. Both presidents then brought in speed reading instruction for their staff so that they would be productive readers as well.   JFK could read 2,500 wpm, in part because he was able to read large groups of words at a glance, and regularly read 6 newspapers front to back at breakfast.

Jimmy and Amy Carter engaged in a speedreading course at the White House.

The Roosevelts both taught themselves to speed read.  FDR began his speedreading training by reading two or three words at a time, building to reading two or three lines at a glance, and eventually working up to absorbing entire paragraphs.  Sometimes he would glance at a page, then turn the page and consider what the writer was saying.  Teddy read a book before breakfast every day when he was President and sometimes read as many as three books a day.  His comprehension and recall were fantastic:  He could remember all the important points and even quote from the books he read.

There is a bumper sticker that says Readers Are Leaders.  In the case of these presidents, we could say Speed Readers Lead.  I have met many highly successful people who have told me that they had taken a speed reading course along the way, and we have taught many rising leaders.  I taught a high school sophmore last weekend who doen’t aspire to the presidency, but he has definite leadership goals and this was a step in meeting them. You might not become a president after taking our course, but you will have the tools and confidence to reach your career and education goals.  To honor the Speed Reading Presidents, all who sign up for any of our spring courses by Wednesday, February 22nd can save $50 and take it for the student rate of $425.  Become a speedreader:  You’ll be in great company!

Judith Barker
Bonnie James

When learning a skill–be it baseball, conversational Spanish, or guitar–you know that practice is the key to mastering it.  (By mastering we mean becoming excellent, not perfect.  As Michael J. Fox once said, “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.  Excellence, I can reach for, perfection is God’s business.”)  In his new book Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning, Gary Marcus, a cognitive psychologist at New York University, sets out to learn to play the guitar at the advanced age of 38.  What Gary stresses in his book is that deliberate practice is the key.  “Playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level.” 

What is important is a “constant sense of evaluation, of focusing on one’s weaknesses.”  Whether it’s your batting swing, your Spanish pronunciation, or your guitar chords, practicing them wrong is doing more harm than good.  This is true for reading as well.  To get better and better requires letting go of old habits and doing the hard work to form new habits; then practicing them to become and stay an excellent reader, while letting go of the idea of being a “perfect” reader.

I’ve heard parents complain about their children and their ability to read:  “I make him read every night for an hour, and he still is a terrible reader.”  Chances are the parents were never taught to read correctly.  They were taught just to pronounce words by pointing at each individual word making sure “they got it” (were perfect) before moving on.  This misinformation they passed on to their child.  So the child practices reading incorrectly every day and gets further entrenched in bad reading habits–and this practice is boring, even tortuous–and eventually he will hate to read .  What the child–and the grown up version of that child–needs is instruction on how to read correctly and then deliberate practice.

If you’ve already taken the Advanced Reading Concepts speedreading course, you know that mastering speedreading does not end when the course does.  It is essential that you continue to do your eyecharts and to practice the techniques you’ve learned, particularly those that are most difficult.  It is through diligent, deliberate practice that you will be a master speedreader.  If you’re a graduate and would like some help with your speedreading practice, consider purchasing our WIIFM Stick™, a little flash drive that reviews everything covered in our course.

Judith Barker

Bonnie James

Great article.  We’re new at this so we found this helpful–as are her other blogs!

Through the years, the main thing that has changed is that in today’s frazzled world, people are very impatient about how long it takes is to make change. A great quote I heard recently was “instant gratification takes too long.” Our courses went from 8 weeks (the length of time it takes for a new habit to take hold) to 5 weeks to fit into school terms, to weekend classes to accommodate busy people and those coming in from out-of-town. Now people say “a WHOLE weekend?” We’re mixing that up a bit for spring–evening classes in a shorter time span, a weekend class with the Sunday session starting in the afternoon for people who go to church on Sunday morning and things like that–making it easier to schedule for people who find changing a life time habit to be more effective with a good coach.

We’ve come to realize that there are some people who want to learn to read faster who are just never going to be able to come for an in-person class. Some people want to take an introductory seminar before allocating the resources and time for a full course. Some people live too far away for it to be practical to come to a short seminar. Some people just have crazy schedules.

So, we have launched a seminar that can be done on-line. It gives some of the basic strategies that speed readers use and our graduates’ favorite eye technique that increases reading speed by about 100 words per minute. It still takes an uninterrupted hour. It really does. People can go back to the site five times to get better and better or in case they get interrupted.

Learning to be a more efficient reader is essential for gathering the necessary information in this fast paced world. So just as it might be more efficient to have a personal trainer instead of a video, a ski instructor instead of a tape–watching a video or listening to a tape will improve a skill a lot more than never making the effort to improve. Our on-line seminar will make people faster than if they never tried to change.   And we want to help everyone with an interest read faster and understand more.

1. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (2010).  Grades 4-7.  In the summer of 1968, Delphine and her little sisters fly across country to Oakland to spend the summer with their mother, who they have not seen in years.  Their mother, who seems to resent their intrusion, sends them every morning to a camp run by the Black Panthers.
2. Countdown by Deborah Wiles (2010).  Grades 5-8.  Franny, a fifth grader in suburban Maryland, must deal with her quirky family, as well as her fear of impending war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
3. Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm (2007).  Grades 5-8.  In the summer of 1953 Penny loves baseball, swimming, butter pecan ice cream and spending time with her father’s large Italian family.  Her father died when she was still a baby, but none of her family will talk to her about his death. 
4. The Watsons Go to Birmingham–1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis (1995).  Grades 5-8.   Ten-year-old Kenny and his family go to Birmingham, Alabama to visit his grandmother, heading straight for one of the darkest moments in America’s history.
5. The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (2007).  Grades 5-9.  On Wednesday afternoons when half the seventh-grade class goes to Hebrew school and the other half to Catechism, Holling, the lone Presbyterian, finds himself alone with Mrs. Baker, who takes the opportunity to expose Holling to Shakespeare.  Oh how she must hate him!
6. Harris and Me by Gary Paulsen (2007).  Grades 6-9.  A young boy is sent to his cousin’s farm to spend the summer, where he encounters the rigors of farm life and his daring cousin Harris.
7. Peeled by Joan Bauer (2008).  Grades 6-9.  Hildy Biddle, a reporter for her high school paper, is investigating rumors of a ghost at the old Ludlow apple orchard.
8. Flip by Martyn Bedford (2011).  Grades 7-10.  One early summer morning, 14-year-old Alex wakes up in a strange body in a strange bed in a strange room in a strange house, and he has no recollection of anything that has happened since last December.
9. Trapped by Michael Northrup (2011).  Grades 7-10.  Seven teenagers are trapped in their rural New England high school by the worst  nor’easter on record.
10. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2009).  Grades 7-10.  Fourteen-year-old Junior, a bright but poor Spokane Indian living on a reservation, finds himself stuck between two worlds when he decides to leave the reservation school to attend an all-white school 22 miles from home.
11. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1967).  Grades 7-10.  Ponyboy lives on the wrong side of town with his two older brothers.  The brothers spend a lot of time with their gang, the Greasers, who are constantly at war with the Socs, the rich kids from the other side of town.
12. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999).  Grades 9-12.  This coming-of-age novel tells the story of Charlie, a brilliant high-school freshman, whose best friend committed suicide.

Judith Barker

Bonnie James

In an online article for Scholastic.com, author LouAnne Johnson offers a list of reasons kids despise reading, some of which follow:

1. They read slower than their peers and, thus, get left behind.
2. They expect to be tested on what they read, and they expect to fail the test.
3. They believe they’ll have to finish every reading selection, no matter how long or difficult.
4. They believe they are too far behind to ever catch up.
5. They lack interest in the assigned reading material.
6. They are unable to retain what they’ve read.

Kids reading at a slow pace will get bored and their minds will wander.  As a result they are unable to concentrate on their reading, ensuring they will get even further behind their peers.  What is needed is not to slow down their reading, but rather to speed it up.  Speedreading enables students to speed their reading up 3 to 5 times their current rate.  In no time, they’ll be able to catch up with their peers.  What’s more, speedreading promotes greater comprehension, retention, and recall of what’s been read, giving them confidence and improving their chances of passing their tests.

Judith Barker

Bonnie James

I found out that there is more going on today than Friday the 13th!  And both special days fit into how people perceive life and learning new hard things–like speed reading!

Today is also “International Skeptics Day” as well as “Make Your Dreams Come True Day”.  I don’t think these days are celebrated by the same people, do  you?  There are people who have “that look” whenever I tell them I teach speed reading.  And I know that no matter what statistics I give them, they will choose to believe that it is black magic or vodoo or snake skin oil.  A man recently attended one of my introductory lessons  on the “Myths of Speed Reading” who asked me half way through the seminar why anyone would want to read fast.  And he is a professional!  I asked “Does your mind wander when you read?”  He said “yes.”  And I said “there’s your answer.”  But he still had “that look.”  Hope he celebrated his day today.  Of course with the silly season called Primaries we are all feeling that way right now;  it would be nice just to have one day be Internatonal Skeptics Day and be done with it. 

Now about the “Make Your Dreams Come True Day” — if there is something holding you back from achieving yours, find how to get the skills, motivation or resources to achieve them.  Use this day to find out how to achieve them.  And if you read this blog after January 13th — make your own ”Make Your Dreams Come True Day.”  Maybe you want to get some coaching, enroll in some classes, contact resources through LinkedIn, start your own business or buy the boat.  Or maybe you will decide to devote the time to finally take a speed reading course as the first step in gaining the confidence and information gathering skills in preparing to achieve those dreams.  That is unless you are still  stuck celebrating ”International Skeptics Day.”  If not, ask us about how we can help with those dreams. 

And about the Friday the 13th part of today, it’s really OK to let a black cat cross your path, rub against your feet, or walk on your keyboard.

Unlike normal reading, which takes place in the left brain, speedreading occurs in the right brain.  Students with ADD or dyslexia often struggle with learning to read and are placed in remedial programs, but these programs encourage their readers to slow down and take their time.  This is exactly the wrong thing to do.  It is essential that students with ADD or dyslexia not read slowly, as their ”minds work visually and often at a feverish pace.”  What’s more, because “reading is about comprehension, and comprehension is about visualization, a strength of the right-brained population,” these students with ADD and dyslexia excel at speedreading.

If you’re left brained, take heart.  Though most of us are either right brained or left brained, everyone has access to both sides of their brains.  (I, for example, am 59% right-brain dominated and 41% left-brain dominated, at least, according to the results of an online test.)  Speedreading may be more difficult for a left-brained person, but, nonetheless,  it is a skill that anyone can–and should–acquire.

 Judith Barker
Bonnie James

I started this blog to share some of the insights and experiences from my thirty plus years of teaching speed reading–the little successes of my students that add up along with their major victories have fueled my passion for what we do here–and are worth sharing.  I’ve had the good fortune to meet some extraodinary and interesting people from all over the country– in my summer school and public courses, classes for corporations, the government and the miliary and in networking events.  I hope you enjoy their stories.

I have seen the results of early reading experiences in these teens and adults –the good, the bad and the ugly.  Therefore, I have some really strong opinions on what helps people become good readers and what cripples their ability to read and sometimes their egos.  I will be sharing those as well.  I hope that you will feel their joys and pain through my words .  Maybe you can use these experiences to help others or just to understand them better.

Judith, our assistant and a blogger in her own right, will also be posting.  She will be writing about reading disorders and how speed reading can help with them and other findings in her reasearch about reading and speed reading.

We will post pictures from our courses and testimonials from our students (who have given permission to do so)–and any other pictures we find amusing!

The story behind the cat picture is this:  My office is in my home; we have cats; they are very interested in what we do and “help” us as much as possible.  So, if you don’t hear from me in a timely manner, your business card was knocked on the floor, and I haven’t found it again yet.  My artist sister, Marcia Abbate, drew a picture of Buddy helping me with my mouse at the keyboard.  It sort of says how the office work gets done here.

More later,

Bonnie James