i - "A
The World's
Greatest
Teacher...
BOOKS
By MARK VAN DOREN
In honor of National Library Week,
April 3 to 10, this famous educator and
writer tells us what reading
means to him and can mean to you
COVER:
As the camera of Dennis Hnllinan reveals,
a stop sign has replaced the old nursery
rhyme, and April showers now bring little
boys hours of blissful puddle-wandering.
IN our society there is no more noticeable difference than the difference
between the thoughtful and the unthoughtful person.
The specific, the distinguishing, quality of any person is the quality of his
mind. And nothing does more to cultivate the mind than the reading of books.
The ability to read a book is like the ability to listen; it implies a mind that
is disciplined to receive and entertain ideas. The good listener has no pride
of that wrong sort which assumes that nothing further can be learned.
In the real world, there is always more to learn than even the wisest person
will succeed in learning, but the sign of wisdom in him is his recognition of
this fact, and his willingness to make the most of his opportunity. The good
reader, like the good listener, not only knows how to use his mind; he knows
how to change it No activity is happier than the first of these; nothing is nobler
than the second.
What could be more natural than the desire to own a useful or delightful
book, to keep it on a private shelf, to mark it up if need be? The wise man
borrows books whn he has to, buys them when he can.
For it is books that change us most. The young student will listen to his
teachers, but they have had their teachers, too; the books by which their
intellects were formed. The parent will hope that his son or daughter may
find good teachers at college, and, of course, they will be there. However, the
master teachers will be the books the students read.
These never change, just as they never diminish in number. They are the
everlasting teachers by which the human race has got its education.
Indeed, books stretch our minds the most elastic thing human beings
possess. The youth who forms the habit of letting books alter his thinking
will never lose it, though he may exercise it less in later years.
At college, he will be expected to read books as he once read articles or
stories; to take in the whole of a long argument or exposition or narrative;
to keep the parts of it before him as he reads, and to see them in their natural
relation; to live with an author for hours or days or weeks; to venture through
new worlds as if he had a right to be there.
The world of college is many worlds, all of which may be new to the young
traveler. His passport to the world of books is his desire and his ability to
read. He will come back a richer person than before. He may or may not be
able to tell his parents what he has seen, but they will be glad he took the
journey for it will have made him the independent soul they wanted him to be.
The clearest indication of a truly educated person is the habit of buying
and reading books. It is a habit he will cherish as long as he has life.
LEONARD S. DAVIOOW Prraidraf and rMi.hrr
WALTER C. DREYFUS Vim Prr.idr.it
PATRICK I. OtOURKE Adtrrfiiinir Director
Smd all advortiitng communication! to
Family Wcokly, 133 N. Michigan Aro., Chicago I, III.
April 3, 1960
Board of Editor
ERNEST V. HEYN Bditor-iti-CnW
I REN KARTMAN Kttentiv Editor
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