George R. Klare
Encyclopedia
George R. Klare was a World War II veteran and a distinguished professor of psychology and dean at Ohio University
. His field was statistical psychology and his major contribution was in the field of readability
. From the beginning of the 20th century, the assessment of the grade level of texts for different grades of readers was a central concern of reading research. It was well known that without correctly graded texts, readers would not improve their reading skill. There were over 1,000 published studies on this topic. Klare's contribution to that effort came both in his critical reviews of the studies and his participation in original research.
and graduated from that school in 1940. He received a Regents Scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he studied before being called into the Army Air Force in 1942. He then took more college and officer training at the University of Missouri.
Klare later recounted his experiences as a war prisoner in a chapter entitled "Questions" in Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment, published by Springer in 2004. In this extraordinary account, Klare tells how he narrowly escaped death five times the day he was shot down. The boys who first discovered him in a field were debating in German whether or not to shoot him. Later, while being driven through Fulda, the town he had just bombed, a crowd of citizens tried to kill him. During that episode, Klare witnessed kindness and heroism in the act of a German guard who dispersed the angry crowd and brought Klare and the rest of his crew to safety. The guard, a Luftwaffe captain, had lost his own family in the Allied bombing of Germany. "I owe my life to him,” Klare wrote. “He was the bravest man I ever saw.”
Later, while on a train, the train station he had just left was bombed by the allies. Still later that same day, while being questioned, his interrogators threatened to shoot him. Klare's account shows that the methods used by the German interrogators of war prisoners are disturbingly similar to those commonly used by police in American cities.
Klare remained active in veterans' issues the rest of his life. His contributions include:
. After working for The Psychological Corporation in New York City and the University of Illinois, he became an assistant professor of psychology in 1954 at Ohio University.
It was during that period, he published, with Byron Buck, Know Your Reader: The Scientific Approach to Readability. This work introduced to the public the extensive research behind the popular readability formulas
of the likes of Rudolf Flesch
and Robert Gunning
. The book showed the average reader in America was an "adult of limited reading ability," with half the population reading below the 9th-grade level. The readability formulas could be used to select and create literature and texts of different reading levels. Without appropriately graded texts, people will not read or improve their reading skill.
His other books include Elementary Statistics (with P. A. Games), A Manual for Readable Writing, and How to Write Readable English. He also published 85 articles and book chapters.
Klare won a Fulbright grant to the Open University of England. He also won the Best of Show award in the Journal Article Competition of the International Technical Communication Conference in 1978 and the Oscar S. Causey Award for Outstanding Contributions to Reading Research in 1981, and was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame of the International Reading Association in 1997. He served on the editorial boards of eight journals, as well as The Literary Dictionary. He is listed in Who's Who in America and was listed in the Fourth Edition of How's Who in the World.
In 1978, he was named Distinguished Professor of Psychology. While at Ohio University, he served as chair of the Psychology Department from 1959 to 1963, as acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1965–66 and in 1984–85, and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1966 to 1971. He was also acting associate provost for graduate and research programs from 1986 until his retirement in 1987.
As the unofficial chronicler of this ongoing research, Klare published four landmark reviews, The Measurement of Readability in 1963, "Assessing Readability" in 1975 (which was named a Citation Classic by the Institute for Scientific Information), "Readability" in 1984. and "Readable Computer Documentation" in 2000.
Later, as the U.S. military invested heavily in readability research, he participated in several important studies that showed the usefulness of readability formulas in improving the 1. comprehension, 2. retention, 3. reading speed, and 4. reading persistence of technical manuals and instructional materials.
Klare also conducted or participated in research on the features of the reader that effected readability: 1. prior knowledge, 2. level of reading skill, 3. interest, and 4. motivation. In one 1976 analysis of 35 readability experiments, Klare showed how important it is to control for these variables when doing reader research.
The century ended with a more complete view of those variables affecting reading success, much of it due to Klare's efforts. Readability, it turned out, is not an absolute residing in the text, but is a product of the interaction between the reader and the text. In the text, those variables that affect readability are 1. content, 2. grade level (style), design, and organization. In the reader, the variables are 1. prior knowledge, 2. level of reading skill, 3. interest, and 4. motivation.
George R. Klare died on March 3, 2006, at his home in The Plains, Ohio, from pneumonia at the age of 83. He was survived by his wife, Julie M. Klare; a daughter, Deborah Fox of Vero Beach, Fla.; a son, Roger, and daughter-in-law, Connie Schmittauer, of Dublin, Ohio; and a daughter, Barbara, and son-in-law, Galen Fultz, of San Anselmo, Calif. He has a grandson, McCoy, and a granddaughter, Zoe, also of San Anselmo; a granddaughter, Sivan, of Portland, Ore.; and a step-sister, Dorothy Launer, of Fremont, Neb.
Ohio University
Ohio University is a public university located in the Midwestern United States in Athens, Ohio, situated on an campus...
. His field was statistical psychology and his major contribution was in the field of readability
Readability
Readability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. Various factors to measure readability have been used, such as "speed of perception," "perceptibility at a distance," "perceptibility in peripheral vision," "visibility," "the reflex blink technique," "rate of work" , "eye...
. From the beginning of the 20th century, the assessment of the grade level of texts for different grades of readers was a central concern of reading research. It was well known that without correctly graded texts, readers would not improve their reading skill. There were over 1,000 published studies on this topic. Klare's contribution to that effort came both in his critical reviews of the studies and his participation in original research.
Early life
George R. Klare was born April 17, 1922, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, son of George C. Klare, and Lee L. (Launer) Klare. He served as senior class president in North Bend High School in North Bend, NebraskaNorth Bend, Nebraska
North Bend is a city in Dodge County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 1,213 at the 2000 census.-Geography:North Bend is located at . It lies on the north bank of the Platte River, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 30 and Nebraska Highway 79...
and graduated from that school in 1940. He received a Regents Scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he studied before being called into the Army Air Force in 1942. He then took more college and officer training at the University of Missouri.
World War II
Following military and flight training, Klare served as a navigator on B-17 bombers in the Eighth Air Force in England. On Dec. 31, 1944, he was shot down over Germany. He spent the rest of World War II in German POW camps. He was liberated by advancing Soviet troops from Stalag Luft One on May 1, 1945. He was honorably discharged as a First Lieutenant in December, 1945, receiving the Air Medal, the Purple Heart, European area ribbons and the Prisoner of War medal.Klare later recounted his experiences as a war prisoner in a chapter entitled "Questions" in Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment, published by Springer in 2004. In this extraordinary account, Klare tells how he narrowly escaped death five times the day he was shot down. The boys who first discovered him in a field were debating in German whether or not to shoot him. Later, while being driven through Fulda, the town he had just bombed, a crowd of citizens tried to kill him. During that episode, Klare witnessed kindness and heroism in the act of a German guard who dispersed the angry crowd and brought Klare and the rest of his crew to safety. The guard, a Luftwaffe captain, had lost his own family in the Allied bombing of Germany. "I owe my life to him,” Klare wrote. “He was the bravest man I ever saw.”
Later, while on a train, the train station he had just left was bombed by the allies. Still later that same day, while being questioned, his interrogators threatened to shoot him. Klare's account shows that the methods used by the German interrogators of war prisoners are disturbingly similar to those commonly used by police in American cities.
Klare remained active in veterans' issues the rest of his life. His contributions include:
Academic life
After WWII, Klare earned a BA degree cum laude in 1946, a MA degree in 1947, and a PhD degree in 1950 in psychology from the University of MinnesotaUniversity of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
. After working for The Psychological Corporation in New York City and the University of Illinois, he became an assistant professor of psychology in 1954 at Ohio University.
It was during that period, he published, with Byron Buck, Know Your Reader: The Scientific Approach to Readability. This work introduced to the public the extensive research behind the popular readability formulas
Readability
Readability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. Various factors to measure readability have been used, such as "speed of perception," "perceptibility at a distance," "perceptibility in peripheral vision," "visibility," "the reflex blink technique," "rate of work" , "eye...
of the likes of Rudolf Flesch
Rudolf Flesch
Rudolf Flesch was an author , and also a readability expert and writing consultant who was a vigorous proponent of plain English in the United States. He created the Flesch Reading Ease test and was co-creator of the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test...
and Robert Gunning
Gunning fog index
In linguistics, the Gunning fog index measures the readability of English writing. The index estimates the years of formal education needed to understand the text on a first reading. A fog index of 12 requires the reading level of a U.S. high school senior...
. The book showed the average reader in America was an "adult of limited reading ability," with half the population reading below the 9th-grade level. The readability formulas could be used to select and create literature and texts of different reading levels. Without appropriately graded texts, people will not read or improve their reading skill.
His other books include Elementary Statistics (with P. A. Games), A Manual for Readable Writing, and How to Write Readable English. He also published 85 articles and book chapters.
Klare won a Fulbright grant to the Open University of England. He also won the Best of Show award in the Journal Article Competition of the International Technical Communication Conference in 1978 and the Oscar S. Causey Award for Outstanding Contributions to Reading Research in 1981, and was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame of the International Reading Association in 1997. He served on the editorial boards of eight journals, as well as The Literary Dictionary. He is listed in Who's Who in America and was listed in the Fourth Edition of How's Who in the World.
In 1978, he was named Distinguished Professor of Psychology. While at Ohio University, he served as chair of the Psychology Department from 1959 to 1963, as acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1965–66 and in 1984–85, and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1966 to 1971. He was also acting associate provost for graduate and research programs from 1986 until his retirement in 1987.
Reading research
Most of the basic research on the readability formulas was done in the first half of the 20th century. The later half was a very contentious period in reading research (especially regarding phonetics). In spite of the controversy, Klare and a few colleagues persisted and focused on:- Consolidation and confirmation of earlier research.
- Developing new formulas and fine-tuning older ones.
- Other variables affecting readability besides the grade-level of text.
- Features of the reader affecting readability.
As the unofficial chronicler of this ongoing research, Klare published four landmark reviews, The Measurement of Readability in 1963, "Assessing Readability" in 1975 (which was named a Citation Classic by the Institute for Scientific Information), "Readability" in 1984. and "Readable Computer Documentation" in 2000.
Later, as the U.S. military invested heavily in readability research, he participated in several important studies that showed the usefulness of readability formulas in improving the 1. comprehension, 2. retention, 3. reading speed, and 4. reading persistence of technical manuals and instructional materials.
Klare also conducted or participated in research on the features of the reader that effected readability: 1. prior knowledge, 2. level of reading skill, 3. interest, and 4. motivation. In one 1976 analysis of 35 readability experiments, Klare showed how important it is to control for these variables when doing reader research.
The century ended with a more complete view of those variables affecting reading success, much of it due to Klare's efforts. Readability, it turned out, is not an absolute residing in the text, but is a product of the interaction between the reader and the text. In the text, those variables that affect readability are 1. content, 2. grade level (style), design, and organization. In the reader, the variables are 1. prior knowledge, 2. level of reading skill, 3. interest, and 4. motivation.
George R. Klare died on March 3, 2006, at his home in The Plains, Ohio, from pneumonia at the age of 83. He was survived by his wife, Julie M. Klare; a daughter, Deborah Fox of Vero Beach, Fla.; a son, Roger, and daughter-in-law, Connie Schmittauer, of Dublin, Ohio; and a daughter, Barbara, and son-in-law, Galen Fultz, of San Anselmo, Calif. He has a grandson, McCoy, and a granddaughter, Zoe, also of San Anselmo; a granddaughter, Sivan, of Portland, Ore.; and a step-sister, Dorothy Launer, of Fremont, Neb.
See also
- ReadabilityReadabilityReadability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. Various factors to measure readability have been used, such as "speed of perception," "perceptibility at a distance," "perceptibility in peripheral vision," "visibility," "the reflex blink technique," "rate of work" , "eye...