Quantum Speed Reading

[James_H]

This has turned up in the news as a fad in China. It does seem to be, but a youtube search also shows it being practiced in India and Japan. It's also not new: one video from Japan was uploaded four years ago but looks older (it looks to be shot on videotape). Another is from eight years ago. That one seems to have some association with the indigo children movement.

The technique was developed by a Japanese schoolteacher named Ms. Yumiko Tobitani. Did you notice that not all the children in the videos were actually looking at the books? It's not a problem. From www.quantumspeedreading.com:

Unlike the many well established forms of speed reading that are in existence QSR does not require the book to be opened at all. The book is simply held up in front of the reader's face and the pages are flipped rapidly using the thumb much like when preparing to shuffle playing cards. It is thus a truly revolutionary advancement in education.

But wait, there's more!

The QSR technique is not solely about reading however. It can also be utilised in several other creative ways for problem solving and memorizing, for health improvement and stress reduction as well as for positive thinking and what can only be described as quasi telepathic communication with plants and animals for example.

The website also contains some interesting descriptions from QSR kids: reading a book in this way sounds like a synaesthetic experience. (If this is the case, however, how are they able to recite the book afterwards?)

Quantum Speed Reading is a type of book reading which you flip over the pages very fast.
Yet this is a little different then usual reading.
This fashion is easy, but it tickles the emotion that only a human can have, and this fashion is easy even when you don't know how to read the word or kanji* in the book.
I can't understand a book or read Kanji just by simply reading it, I think this is what I call a "Life's Code". My way to feel this is by various things like seeing colors, seeing pictures or smelling things. Perhaps just by putting a title to a blank none-writen book, then the content from the title will stand out from the book.
You're able to make titles like" Your 20 year-old self" for instance.
I want to continue this Quantum Speed Reading.

Quantum Speed Reading can let the user to see pictures or hear sounds from picture-less books.
Quantum Speed Reading is a marvelous world.
It will able the user to see the hero of the book.
If you are able to hear sounds and see movies I think it will able to let you see the scene. You will also find out what feeling the author had why he or she wrote the book. I think you could use Quantum Speed Reading to read long books.

This Quantum Speed Reading has a lot of affects that will change by how you use it.
There are affects like,
1. You could see the future,
2. You could see the past,
3. You could make you wounds heal,
4. You could see if things will go better for your self,
e.t.c.
There may able to do new thing depending how you use it.
This is Quantum Speed Reading.

If you use Quantum Speed Reading you will feel like your in a forest and it will feel good.
I used Quantum Speed Reading to read a train schedule book and I saw an image of"a train that was stopping at a train station". I read an English book using Quantum Speed Reading and I saw an image of"an athletic meeting which was having a racing".

This one is especially interesting:

If you use Quantum Speed Reading you could understand a book without even reading it.
Using this Quantum Speed Reading you could write a title to a blank none-writen book and Speed Read it to know the detailed information from it.

 

[EnolaGaia]

For all intents and purposes, this undated China news article characterizes QSR as a scam that attracts parents desperate to improve their child's chances of advancement in an extremely hierarchical and status-infected educational system.

It's not surprising this QSR stuff seems to have taken hold only in nations noted for individual dreams of advancement combined with daunting hurdles students must overcome to avoid lifelong disadvantage.

China’s state news agency Xinhua has slammed the speed-reading courses as “baseless” and “against common sense in learning and studying.”

https://www.inkstonenews.com/educat...nd-speed-reading-classes-kids/article/3033386

 

[kamalktk]

from the video:
Cost to learn the technique: $4200 to $7000

 

[James_H]

For all intents and purposes, this undated China news article characterizes QSR as a scam that attracts parents desperate to improve their child's chances of advancement in an extremely hierarchical and status-infected educational system.

And it's not the only one.

I've noticed in Hong Kong that magical essential oils are very popular among helicopter parents - a lot of young parents here seem excessively concerned about their children's health as well as educational advancement.

There's a lot to be written about these phenomena in East Asian* parenting - and I'm sure a lot has. Couples here often have just one child who becomes kind of the future representative of the family, and as such they will pour a lot of resources into 'perfecting' that child. I would argue this is to the detriment of the child's happiness and indeed childhood, but others would say that later financial security in a crowded market is true happiness. It's also an investment for the future because in this society the child is expected to look after and financially support the parents in old age (much more so than in the West). Competition is more intense because of the sheer numbers and density of people. There is probably also some relationship to ideas of 'face' and Confucian attitudes to family, but I don't understand either of those very well so I'll keep out of it.

For friends my age (30s) I talk to, they often experienced intense parental pressure to succeed, but didn't have to fill up all their hours at school with extracurricular classes like the kids I teach do now. I once said to a kid I tutor 'have a nice weekend!' and she said 'i won't because I have piano, drawing, ballet, two other English lessons, maths...'.

I've also seen photos of extremely age-inappropriate materials from private kindergartens (worksheets about metatarsals, tibiae and fibiae) which clearly target parents who are blinded to common sense by a desire for doctor offspring.

But there's a lot of money to be made from this kind of parental anxiety and where there's money to be made some people will jump at the chance.

I'm probably way off base with a lot of this analysis but it's based on my observations as a tutor and teacher, and conversations with friends who are parents or who were once children.

* China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan

 

[EnolaGaia]

I think you nailed it with the allusion to traditional / cultural attitudes about family and family obligations.

It would be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming decades. I'm not sure how many such kids who proceed to achieve elevated educational and vocational successes will necessarily bring the fruits of those successes "home" (to the hometown; to the benefit of the family) unless these strong traditional / cultural family bonds remain operative and all generations are satisfied with the limited intra- and inter-national mobility this self-supporting model implies (if not mandates).

 

[Shady]

Well that puts my speed reading to shame lol

 

[Spookdaddy]

There's a girl at around 0:58 who actually appears to be reading the book in front of her. The look of disdain on her face is an absolute picture.

I'd lay odds on her being the one who does best at school.

It's surely based on the most easily tested of claims. But then, I suppose although some scams are based on elaborate external frameworks, many - maybe the most effective - simply expoilt the self-deceit of the victim, and need little else in the way of structure. (Clearly, as far as the scammers go, the financial victims here are the parents, I doubt that the children are anything but a means to an end).

 

[Mythopoeika]

Well that puts my speed reading to shame lol

No, it doesn't.
Those kids are flipping the pages way too fast. They can't possibly get anything out of it.
I used to be able to speed read, but nothing like that. They're being conned.

 

[henry]

effectiveness would depend on the nature of the material ? if it were visually coded and sequenced according to the method of flipping through the pages quickly, then that would beat traditional page turning eg. a series of diagrams depicting stages of cell division, or exploded view assembly diagrams etc.

as for the wider claims, folderol

 

[Shady]

Yea, they can probably catch the odd word, but not make an entire story out, unless they read the bit on the back cover which may give them a clue as to the story, i think one wasn't even flicking the pages at all

 

[henry]

unless they read the bit on the back cover

technically the blurb, is it on the back or the front over there ? and are these QSRs reading the material in the opposite direction to tradition ?

 

[James_H]

If you read the website you'll see it's not really supposed to be reading, but a form of psychometry (in the occult sense). They're holding the book close to their head so they can use the third eye (or whatever), not the regular eyes.

 

[escargot]

If you read the website you'll see it's not really supposed to be reading, but a form of psychometry (in the occult sense). They're holding the book close to their head so they can use the third eye (or whatever), not the regular eyes.

Oh, TOTALLY authentic then!

 

[henry]

theres clearly some form of reading going on