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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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 [b]Pride and prejudice and Crime and punishment[/b] within a couple of weeks. I read these books in HS. They are interesting and not that hard to read.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

DP. Read Crime and Punishment in high school and it still ranks as one of my all time favorites. It’s phenomenal.[/quote]

I read it in high school and hated it.  My friends invented some in-jokes off of it and that was the best part.

Spoiler.  There's a wack job who murders an old lady and that's basically the only interesting scene in 300 pages.  [b]The rest is a bunch of dull policing and OP having recriminations and delirious sweats[/b].

And I liked Moby Dick even though it has tons of filler.  So it's not that I can't handle a bit of tedium with my great literature.

The great Russian novels should be left for college.[/quote]

Not true at all. He didn't murder one lady; there is a lot of romance etc. This is what people who haven't read the book think.[/quote]

I read it all.  Pre-1900s romance is boooooring.  I had to become middle-aged to understand how Pride & Prejudice could be romantic.  C&P is an unhappy, depressing book all the way through.[/quote]

The fact that you think it's boring just shows you haven't trained your mind to understand it. This is why when people say "Who cares what kids read, just let them read!" I always flinch. Minds and character are for training, and what you read will train you. Start reading the good stuff and you'll be able to read the harder, longer good stuff when you're older.[/quote]

It’s all just taste and opinion.

You sound like someone that also believes that you should only listen to classical music and opera.

Why not just accept people like what they like and don’t like what they don’t like and move on.[/quote]

People might think I'm dumb if I don't say how much I love things that people say are smart.

When's the last time one of these uber readers on DCUM posted a comment, on any topic, that was informed by the content of one these classics they extol? 
[/quote]

Are you (a) asking for an ROI of great works of literature, many of which have endured for centuries if not millennia, while also (b) using as your standard of measurement the extent to which specific works of literature have been invoked in DCUM posts? [/quote]

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