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]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.[/quote]

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

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.[/quote]

PP - people like you are what's wrong with the world.  We study certain books and lessons because it's classic - these themes are universal and lasting.  By educating ourselves through breaking down characters and analyzing themes and taking the time to reflect on context and interpretations - these lessons make us stronger, better, more wise when we live our lives.  Reading fiction is about studying personalities.  You get to really understand how to read people, you learn about human nature and it truly gives you a leg up on the world because as social animals, we deal with other people.  It's a gift to be able to learn what drives us.  The best books teach you that.

It's not about being less progressive nor recognizing everything changes with time.  I'm the first person who says all the time you can't expect things to remain the same forever.  But you can teach certain concepts which will not change and these lessons in math, science, language, reading - they don't change.

You can certainly fun stuff and whatever you want - of course you don't have to only read Anna Karina or A Tale of Two Cities.  But you have to be able to if you need or want to.  We fail our kids when we can't be bothered to recognize the value of teaching them a skill set as basic as reading comprehension at a high level and the ability to analyze themes.

It's like texting.  We all text and it's fine, but when you can't type more than 3 full sentences and write a paragraph, that's just very sad.  It's what we've become.  I can read a map and give directions as I'm 50.  I don't think a lot of 25 year olds can because they don't have to but I believe that it's a disadvantage they can't.  They don't have to know how to do it anymore of course but the skills and abilities that go into doing so are still valuable. [/quote]

I partly agree with your elegantly expressed rationale but I think a lot of the classics I read in high school were not inspiring or relatable. Most of them were tragedies and really depressing.

Most of the tragedies boiled down to obvious lessons like:

-Don't be a bad person, steal, or kill

-If you do a bad thing it will haunt you

-Power corrupts and technology will lead to a dystopia

-Shit happens

-When individuals oppose the state it usually doesn't end well

I feel like people could definitely develop those understandings outside of reading fiction.  Unfortunately, people have to read a lot of tedious classics to find the ones they do like.

I have read 1,000s of pages of classics.  I love to read in general.  But it's mostly not due to curriculum.  And I think non-fiction is equally worthy as long as it's adult level and written with some degree of craft.  And I get the most insight on people by reading biographies and autobiographies and long form journalism instead of ponderings about Heathcliff and Captain Ahab.

We just have a cultural construct that "privileges" lengthy fiction.  We have been indoctrinated to believe that due to university traditions.  It works well, but is not the "One True Way".[/quote]

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