the Atlantic: The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books

[Anonymous]

This just makes me remember the snotty CAP teacher who told me at the open house that my kid would get to read lots of excerpts from non white writers if she got in.

She did not... But she was lucky enough to get an IB diploma instead.

I really do mourn an entire generation here. I'm an editor. I work with your kids. They have no critical skills. No attention span. They dismiss entire schools of literature wholesale for being "sexist," which is a word their Bridgeton, anima, yaoi-loving selves do not actually understand.

[Anonymous]

I bet this issue is less common at Oxbridge , where kids need to pass subject matter interviews before getting in

[Anonymous]

This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

What is fueling some public schools to move to excerpts and select chapters and not reading, synthesizing and analyzing full novels?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do schools not assign summer reading? My kids school gives a long list of books (prose and poetry) from which kids can choose. They have to read a certain number of books and are expected to write briefly about the reading they did over the summer. Both my kids have had some version of this every year at different schools since 4th grade. Seems like the kind of thing a parent could implement if schools aren't.

The point of Summer isn’t for schools to assign more work. Summer is for breaks, exploring other interest and learning other life skills. If parents want to assign school related things that’s their prerogative. Schools on the other hand have an academic calendar that doesn’t include Summer and as such shouldn’t include required assignments. If they want to assign work during Summer then change to a year round academic calendar.

It is essentially becoming a poorly implemented year round school. FCPS is implementing it like Standards Based Grading, that is, without the proven way of doing it, 9 weeks in school and 3 weeks off.

Parents argued the purpose of school is so they can work, so here we are. We now have a system that is not focused on academics. Rather, we have a school focused on keeping kids in a building for most of the week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

I guess you didn’t read the article.

The author herself said it is an increasingly private school issue as well as she attended a prep school where she had to read exactly one book all year.

Honestly, I don’t think 98% of the comments on this thread reflect reading more than the headline to this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I bet this issue is less common at Oxbridge , where kids need to pass subject matter interviews before getting in

Like everywhere and anywhere, standards have been relaxed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

What is fueling some public schools to move to excerpts and select chapters and not reading, synthesizing and analyzing full novels?

Begins with an “E.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

I guess you didn’t read the article.

The author herself said it is an increasingly private school issue as well as she attended a prep school where she had to read exactly one book all year.

Honestly, I don’t think 98% of the comments on this thread reflect reading more than the headline to this thread.

In my job, I have had frequent contact with some of these young Atlantic writers. They are not the brightest. I am not even going to bother reading this article. It's just a young, naive woman who never read a book and found just the right people to confirm her perspective. What she writes just simply isn't true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

I guess you didn’t read the article.

The author herself said it is an increasingly private school issue as well as she attended a prep school where she had to read exactly one book all year.

Honestly, I don’t think 98% of the comments on this thread reflect reading more than the headline to this thread.

In my job, I have had frequent contact with some of these young Atlantic writers. They are not the brightest. I am not even going to bother reading this article. It's just a young, naive woman who never read a book and found just the right people to confirm her perspective. What she writes just simply isn't true.

It was apparently great tinder for the DCUM mob

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess Calkins came full circle

Democrats pushed the Calkins disaster on our kids.

[Anonymous]

In my job, I have had frequent contact with some of these young Atlantic writers. They are not the brightest. I am not even going to bother reading this article. It's just a young, naive woman who never read a book and found just the right people to confirm her perspective. What she writes just simply isn't true.

You didn’t read the article. How are you able to say what she wrote is not true? Apparently the Atlantic writers aren’t the only ones who aren’t that bright.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

Yes, but many privates have dropped classic literature, which means the students arrive in college without the essential cultural background to understand allusions made in the college-level readings.

[Anonymous]

My kids are in MCPS. They do definitely read at least a few full books on English class. I wish it was more — it seems like it’s one full book per quarter plus then poems and short stories built around that. This quarter my 10tj grader is reading Circe. Last year he read Life of Pi as the last book but I can’t remember what else. I think they are decent books but I do wish they were reading more like 6-8 books a year and mixing in some older ones — maybe 1 19th century and a couple 20th century. It does seem like there is a preference for stuff that came out in the 21st century.

I think the colleges are getting what they asked for. They want kids that have endless extracurriculars, travel teams, competitive clubs that do regional/national competitions, kids that do tons of volunteer work or internships. Exactly when do they think kids are gojng to have time to just read novels? I read tons of novels growing up because my only extracurriculars were a couple clubs that met occasionally and did 1-2 events a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a public school problem. Private schools still require reading full books.

What is fueling some public schools to move to excerpts and select chapters and not reading, synthesizing and analyzing full novels?

When I asked this at the public middle school my child attended (where books were not assigned), the answer was that the excerpts made the material more accessible, and the teachers preferred teaching excerpts.

In the end, I moved my kids to private school.