Colleges and reading

[Anonymous]

I'm now just learning that my kids' only have (minimal) reading outside of the school day...I wonder if this is part of the COVID catch up? Trying not to overwhelm kids? I really worry about what will happen in college...

[Anonymous]

I'm a humanities professor and we keep having faculty and departmental meeting where we discuss the fact that our undergraduates are not doing the assigned reading. We have been strongly encouraged to decrease books to chapters, short academic papers, and films/videos. Even with the films, we are encouraged to screen them in class, otherwise the kids (freshman to seniors) won't watch them. My daughters are both in a small independent high school that does assign a lot of reading. Both of my kids are bookworms who enjoy reading, so they don't mind but they don't tell their classmates that they have read because it makes them unpopular. Many of their classmates just use SparkNotes or get their parents/family members to read or listen to audio books even on major reading assignments for book reports, presentations, and research papers. We thought that a private school where many of the parents are doctors, lawyers, teachers at the school, professors, and business owners would foster a commitment and enjoyment of doing the assigned reading but that has not been out experience. Luckily, our kids are getting the education that they're putting the work in for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm now just learning that my kids' only have (minimal) reading outside of the school day...I wonder if this is part of the COVID catch up? Trying not to overwhelm kids? I really worry about what will happen in college...

I think it's part of the pursuit of equity and not requiring students to do work outside of school because not all of them can (because of family or work responsibilities)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm now just learning that my kids' only have (minimal) reading outside of the school day...I wonder if this is part of the COVID catch up? Trying not to overwhelm kids? I really worry about what will happen in college...

I think it's part of the pursuit of equity and not requiring students to do work outside of school because not all of them can (because of family or work responsibilities)

I agree that is part of the reason...but this seems to be happening in upper level/AP classes too...why let kids choose AP classes and then not expect them to do homework?

[Anonymous]

I’m a college professor in the social sciences and my 100 level classes don’t have a ton of reading, mostly just a few pages from the textbook and then one article (newspaper, think tank or magazine usually) weekly. My upper level classes have a scholarly publication to read for every class. I make them turn in summaries so that they actually do the reading.

[Anonymous]

I have two in engineering programs. They do not even seem to have to buy many books. Problem sets are all they talk about.

[Anonymous]

I teach in the social sciences. I usually have either a textbook or 2 topical scholarly books for the semester plus 1-2 academic articles per week. Plus students have to do research papers that are typically based on 10+ sources outside of the assigned class reading. I have students do an annotated bibliography to ensure they do all the reading. I teach them how to read strategically rather than always 'word for word' though.