Why is this so? Why is it that the poorest readers by traditional standard are often the ablest of people? Why is it that the majority of students have very little idea of how to tackle reading? Why is it that a high proportion of readers - not excluding those whose professional work involves a lot of reading - use a technique that is hardly more advanced than when they were children?
Or why are there people - to take an extreme but illuminating example - who in conversation and discussion will sustain a difficult argument with ease and yet who as readers assimilate only actual information, and even that with difficulty, so that worthwhile books are virtually beyond them? In our opinion, reading presents technical problems of communication that dispose the reader to use inappropriate methods of assimilation; this, and only this, can provide an adequate explanation of why readers as a class are so inefficient.