At his public high school, [this first-year student at an Ivy League university] had never been required to read an entire book. He had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.
That paragraph comes from an article in the current issue of The Atlantic. This student was not unique! Far from it: it turned out that the English professor who discovered this situation had plenty of students with similar high-school experiences. In fact, it was the norm.Not to put too fine a point on it, I was appalled.
Appalling the reader was, of course, the author’s intent.
Perhaps you think this class was full of STEM students (not that that would be an excuse), but no. And the Ivy League university in question wasn’t just some minor second-rate place like Harvard or Yale — it was Columbia! Like the University of Chicago (which is not Ivy League, of course, but equivalent), Columbia reveres the great books of English-language literature. You would expect students who choose to go there to be readers.
Anyway, read the article in the link above. Then it’s your job to figure out what to do about the situation. Before I got sick I would regularly read two or three books a week, so the idea of never reading a complete book leaves me speechless. I guess I have to follow Wittgenstein’s advice: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. (If you are unfortunately without German, Prof. Google is your friend.)
Categories: Books, Teaching & Learning
Learning Strategies 