Scan Artist: How Evelyn Wood Convinced the World That Speed-Reading Worked
Sep 2019 · Chicago Review Press
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240
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About this ebook
The best-known educator of the twentieth century was a scammer in cashmere. "The most famous reading teacher in the world," as television hosts introduced her, Evelyn Wood had little classroom experience, no degrees in reading instruction, and a background that included work at the Mormon mission in Germany at the time when the church was cooperating with the Third Reich. Nevertheless, a nation spooked by Sputnik and panicked by paperwork eagerly embraced her promises of a speed-reading revolution. Journalists, lawmakers and two US presidents lent credibility to Wood's claims of turbocharging reading speeds through a method once compared to the miracle at Lourdes. Time magazine reported Woods grads could polish off Dr. Zhivago in one hour; a senator swore that Wood's method had boosted his reading speed to more than ten thousand words per minute.
But science showed that her method taught only skimming, with disastrous effects on comprehension—a fact Wood was aware of from early in her career. Fudging test results, and squelching critics, she founded a company that enrolled half a million. The course's popularity endured even as evidence of its shortcomings continued to accumulate. Today, as apps and online courses attempt to spark a speed-reading revival, this engaging look at Wood's rise from mission worker to marketer exposes the pitfalls of embracing a con artist's worthless solution to imaginary problems.
But science showed that her method taught only skimming, with disastrous effects on comprehension—a fact Wood was aware of from early in her career. Fudging test results, and squelching critics, she founded a company that enrolled half a million. The course's popularity endured even as evidence of its shortcomings continued to accumulate. Today, as apps and online courses attempt to spark a speed-reading revival, this engaging look at Wood's rise from mission worker to marketer exposes the pitfalls of embracing a con artist's worthless solution to imaginary problems.
About the author
Marcia Biederman has contributed more than 150 articles to the New York Times. She was a staff reporter for Crain's New York Business and her work has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Observer, and Newsday. She is also the author of Popovers and Candlelight: Patricia Murphy and the Rise and Fall of a Restaurant Empire. She lives in New York.
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