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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to a Big3 high school in DC and has read 50+ books cover-to-cover for class during high school.

This is large part of why parents pay for top private schools.

Public library worked for us. Good deal even with the late fees

Neither of your kids are reading the whole book but go ahead and tell yourself they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a lie that 20 years ago students were reading the whole book.

This is NOT new.

Professors are the newest victim class.

Cliff Notes were invented in 1958. So, seems like kids haven't been reading the whole book for over 60 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this. Aren't admissions more competitive than ever? Aren't these the superhuman students who aced the hardest classes, scored extremely highly on SATs, had very time-consuming ECs....? We are told nobody has a chance at these schools, and yet, those who are actually there, can't read a book? How is this possible.

Test prep. Read a short passage find the main idea. Move onto the next skill. Meanwhile, they've never read a whole book about anything. I totally understand why this is happening. Since there's no homework these days, I assign it. My kid is always reading a book for homework, and we're always discussing it.

But that just sounds like a run of the mill 4.0 GPA/grade grabber who we are repeatedly told can't get into, e.g. Columbia.

I mean, my 8th grader is not a big reader and she read a non-fiction psychiatry book over just a few days this summer and we discussed it. Pretty sure she would be capable of discussing Pride and prejudice and Crime and punishment within a couple of weeks. I read these books in HS. They are interesting and not that hard to read.

Those books aren't interesting at all. I mean, Crime & Punishment? Are you now going to tell me War & Peace is interesting too?

Perhaps if we let a kid read a non-fiction psychiatry book instead of Pride and Prejudice or whatever, then things would be better.

But, if you want to read Crime & Punishment, then go for it.

I read Crime & Punishment for AP Lit in high school. We had great discussions about it. Took a Dostoevsky class in college, too. Still think about the things he wrote and the discussions we had. Because that's the thing with the liberal arts, they exist to grow you as a person and inform your outlook on life. Our society would quite possibly be a better place if the programmers and Silicon Valley cowboy coders had to study philosophy and literature.

But I utterly failed at 2 attempts on War & Peace. Oh my goodness, the excessive discussions of the Russian prince from the dying guy. Sorry to the War & Peace lovers on the thread.

You do know that Computer Science is now one of the most popular majors at most SLACs, correct?

The number of students in college theater who are CS majors would shock PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this. Aren't admissions more competitive than ever? Aren't these the superhuman students who aced the hardest classes, scored extremely highly on SATs, had very time-consuming ECs....? We are told nobody has a chance at these schools, and yet, those who are actually there, can't read a book? How is this possible.

They are.. and the majority of the admitted kids are the best of the best. This group that's suffering are likely the 'quota admits' - Athletic, race, donors, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parenting. Try it.

You probably should have read more whole books as a child and teen, as you apparently lack critical thinking skills.

[Anonymous]

And yet so many studnets who actually are reading these dense books in high school, and understanding them, and writing papers about them, and translating "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" from Latin into English, are not getting into these colleges because they don't have a 4.6 GPA.

I think college ADs are asleep on the job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this. Aren't admissions more competitive than ever? Aren't these the superhuman students who aced the hardest classes, scored extremely highly on SATs, had very time-consuming ECs....? We are told nobody has a chance at these schools, and yet, those who are actually there, can't read a book? How is this possible.

They are.. and the majority of the admitted kids are the best of the best. This group that's suffering are likely the 'quota admits' - Athletic, race, donors, etc.

Something tells me the children of people donating hundreds of millions of dollars aren't struggling.

[Anonymous]

Private school parent not in DC

DS has had five books on average a year of assigned reading in English class. Wild that there are schools whose students can get away with reading excerpts or packets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is taking AP Language this year (11th), and the teacher had them read Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell over the summer. DC enjoyed it and said the class discussion and spin-off wring assignments have been great! But …

At Open House / meet the teacher night, DC’s teacher said for the rest of the year the class will be reading non-fiction book EXCERPTS and articles and editorials. Is this normal for AP Lang??

Hopefully AP Lit will be different. A steady stream of actual full-length books, right? That’s what I remember from back in my day (the 90s).

My kid in AP lang didn’t even have to read a book over the summer, just articles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dcs go to a good public high school in the south. Ds has not had to read a book since middle school. Dd has had one book to read for AP English Lit so far, that's it.

You need to rethink labeling this school “good.”

My kid goes to a suburban public school in California. He has read 5-8 novels a year in English class every year.

I’m in a suburban district in California that’s supposedly good and my middle schooler was assigned two whole books to read in three years of public middle school. And those two books were at an elementary level.

[Anonymous]

I wish you guys could see the students in my college classes that I teach. They lack the ability to take notes. They don’t read the textbook. They panic before a test and want a study guide defining exactly what is on the test. They do not want to study any information more than what is on the test. They will ask you questions the morning of the exam. They ask for extra credit. The quality of the student skill set has plummeted in the last 20 years. They are used to fill-in-the-blank guided notes from middle and high school. They are used to re-takes. And, they never see textbooks. It’s easy to ignore the soft copy textbook—why read that? —signed a professor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand this. Aren't admissions more competitive than ever? Aren't these the superhuman students who aced the hardest classes, scored extremely highly on SATs, had very time-consuming ECs....? We are told nobody has a chance at these schools, and yet, those who are actually there, can't read a book? How is this possible.

They are.. and the majority of the admitted kids are the best of the best. This group that's suffering are likely the 'quota admits' - Athletic, race, donors, etc.

Something tells me the children of people donating hundreds of millions of dollars aren't struggling.

What tells you??

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361

"Study on Harvard finds 43 percent of white students are legacy, athletes, related to donors or staff"
"The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled 'ALDCs' in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dcs go to a good public high school in the south. Ds has not had to read a book since middle school. Dd has had one book to read for AP English Lit so far, that's it.

Have you ever heard of the library? My children read books outside of school. Writing is a whole different matter - I don't know how to get them to write essays as an extracurricular

Don't tell that to the CS major parents on DCUM who seem to think that anything non-STEM is intellectually inferior and unchallenging.

The outrage on this topic (on an addictive parenting blog, no less) strikes me as overblown. This trend has been a long time and coming.

But more than that, the reality is that so few adults, even college educated ones, read books once they finish their schooling, I’m not convinced it’s very meaningful information. The way we absorb information and our attention spans have changed. That’s the reality and life is changing because of it.

[Anonymous]

For 7 years in FCPS, they just read a passage and answer a few questions like find the main idea. They just read a 2-4 page handout on ecosystems or Plessy v. Ferguson. They miss out on timelines, definitions, connections, and the ability to see the big picture because they don’t pour over textbooks anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a lie that 20 years ago students were reading the whole book.

This is NOT new.

Professors are the newest victim class.

Cliff Notes were invented in 1958. So, seems like kids haven't been reading the whole book for over 60 years.

^^^ this and even those who "read the book" skim 60% of it.