Word: centered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...illiterate businessman is an extreme case, but not a unique one. Dr. Stella Center, 69, who helped found the clinic ten years ago and now directs it, says sadly: "We are a nation of sixth-grade reading skill." She thinks a high-school graduate should read from 350 to 400 words a minute, understand at least 85% of what he reads. But most Americans who can read at all can read only 150 to 250 words a minute. Some 300 colleges have had to start reading classes for freshmen. Even many college graduates do not know how to read rapidly...
Diagnosis. Since 1937, Dr. Center and her staff have taught 5,000 children and adults at the clinic. First comes diagnosis. The clinicians check to see whether eye trouble is to blame. Then an ophthalmograph photographs the student's eye movements as he reads: how often he pauses on a word or goes back to reread, whether he reads smoothly or in jerks. The clinic also runs the student through a barrage of speed, comprehension, vocabulary, intelligence and psychological tests, uncovers victims of emotional blocks (e.g., jealousy, insecurity) and "mixed dominance" (a brain twist that makes some people read...
...Center tells her students to keep in mind why they are reading. Why Can't We Have More Sugar? should be read for an answer, My First Parachute Jump as a shared experience. Light reading matter should be read breezily, serious or technical stuff more intensively. If the reader knows what to look for and how to pace himself, he will save time. Practice makes perfect, says Dr. Center; after a while, reading may even get to be fun. Backward readers may even discover that great books are not merely printed paper but the communications of eternal minds. Readers...
...siphonapterology was the Hon. Nathaniel Charles Rothschild, second son of the first Baron Rothschild of Tring. He was charmed by fleas while still a student at Cambridge, and pursued them the rest of his life. Says Dr. Hubbard: "The Tring Museum ... at Tring, Hertfordshire, has become the flea center of the world." Flea lovers from all over report their discoveries and send offerings (fleas) to Tring...
Usually he arrives at his office on the 29th floor of Rockefeller Center's RCA Building at 9 a.m. He dislikes paper shuffling so much that his broad, flat-topped desk is almost always clean of everything except a big blotter. At 5 p.m. he usually leaves for home-and he tries not to take any work with him. On the way, he drops in at the University Club for a swim. He feels that a little exercise every day is the reason why he has not missed a day's work in 30 years...