I was struck by this quote from an article from The Atlantic magazine, "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books."
"This development puzzled [Columbia University course teacher on great books Nicholas] Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover."
3 comments:
Alas, I knew a counselor at a high school with a master's degree who bragged she had never read a book.
It's not great. I frogmarch my kids through a few books each year, but I can't trust them to read on their own. (And I doubt such a requirement would be backed up.)
My daughter's eighth-grade English class was going to read DRACULA this year, but the county changed the curriculum and now they're reading a Spider-Man book. I have nothing against Spider-Man, but this seems like a step down.
Also, they now do most of the reading in class rather than at home. The thinking is that this way the teacher is on hand to help people who need it, and students will not have the purportedly baleful distractions of phones.
They do seem to intend to read the whole thing, though.
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