Skimming is reading to get an overview of an article or to get the main idea of a paragraph.

It is similar
to scanning, but requires somewhat closer attention. You resort to skimming when you find a
newspaper article that sound interesting and look through it quickly, probably reading the first and last
paragraphs to see whether you really want to spend time reading the whole article. Skimming helps
students gain an overview of an assigned chapter or article. It gives them some ideas of the topics they
will be working with.

Skim each paragraph or excerpt from a selection quickly, and answer the questions following it.

1. The philosopher as the true aristocrat or rational man is the ideal ruler for the ideal state. The
philosopher is a lover of wisdom, and he alone manages to keep appetite and spirit in harmony
with reason. Consequently, the guardians of the state should be educated as philosophers,
supplementing their training in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music with training in the
philosophic skills of dialectic. But the prospective guardians should not be allowed to undertake
philosophic education until they are old enough to take it seriously, not as mere amusement,
after his philosophic training, the prospective guardian should take part in the active life of his
times, so that at fifty, he can assume political power with some knowledge of the actual matters
with which he shall be concerned.
a. What is the general idea of the paragraph?
b. Why is a philosopher the ideal ruler for the ideal state?

2. In a democracy, the discussion of social, political, and economic topics is not only permitted, it is
required. Obviously, of the citizen is to make wise choices at the polls, he must be informed
about the issues involved. But these issues are not something confined to election day. The
businessman, the engineer, the teacher in their daily lives make decisions which affect our
society. For instance, before a bond issue for new schools comes before the voters, its form and
purpose have been decided upon by educators, real estate experts, engineers, financiers and
lawyers.
a. What is the general topic of the paragraph?
b. Why is the discussion of social, political, and economic topics required in a democracy?

3. Surely, a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, has satisfied
his heart with the highest achievements he is fit for. It is only then that he knows what he is
capable and what his heart demands. Assuredly, no thoughtful man ever came to the end of his
life, and had time and a little space of calm from which to look back upon it, who did not know
and acknowledge that it was what he had done unselfishly and for others, and nothing else, that
satisfied him in the retrospect, and made him feel that he had played the man. And so, men
grow by having responsibility laid upon them, the burden of other people’s business. Their
powers are put out at interest, and they get usury in kind. They are like men multiplied. Each
counts manifold. Men who live with an eye only upon what us their own are dwarfed beside
them – seem fractions while they are integers. The trustworthiness of men seems often to grow
with the trust. – Woodrow Wilson
a. What is the main point of the paragraph?
b. How do men grow?
4. Colleges, like all human organisms designed for moral and spiritual training, stand between the
tendency to take the color of their environment, both good and bad, and the conscious duty to
stand against certain tendencies of the society on which they exist. This is only another way of
saying that colleges have a duty both to society and to the individual student and teacher. In the
college of discipline, the tendency is to emphasize the duty to society as represented by the
organization, at the expense of the individual; in the college of freedom, the tendency is to
emphasize the rights of the individual at the expense of the social organization. The one view
loses sight of the facts that discipline, to be effective, must in the long run be self-discipline; the
other tends to overlook the truth, in civilization, freedom for the individual is a function of the
observance of social restraints. As a result, both the college of discipline and the college of
freedom are peculiarly exposed to the prevailing American tendency to superficiality, but for
exactly opposite reasons: the first, on account of the multiplicity of standards, and the latter on
account of the lack of definite standards. – Henry Smith Pritchett