@ Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

[mcsangel2]

Oct 15, 2024 14:42:18 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Oct 15, 2024 14:28:00 GMT -5 cville said:

@@
My 9th grader is in advanced/honors ELA and has been asked to read ONE book this year, so far as I'm aware. And it was by Stephen King (not one of the horror ones; something history or something, which, why?).

I'm trying to figure out what this is, his autobiography? "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft"?

Maybe 11.22.63? Or Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption? That's a novella.

[Deleted]

My 5th grader had already read one full novel in ELA class this year (and I think they have 3-4 more). He really doesn’t care for fiction, but the books all depict themes and he seems to enjoy discussing those in class. This one was Esperanza Rising and they talked about human rights (tie in with social studies). The next book is supposed to tie in with environmentalism and conservation (tie in with science).

[mention]abs [/mention] I agree that the testing is out of control. My kid doesn’t typically test well despite being smart and a good student, so he basically gets monthly reminders of how bad a test-taker he is. It makes him feel really inferior, and I hate it for him. H teaches in the same grade level at the same school and I’ve asked about opting him out, but both he and our kid’s teacher recommend against it.

[arehopsveggies]

@
Even in primary grades this is happening. The shift from using books for reading instruction to no-illustration decodable passages has been big over the course of my career.

I WANT to combat that with read alouds but I really miss how much I used to be able to dive into book studies even with 6-7 year olds.

My friend teaches high school English and I know she struggles with reading whole books- if she assigns it outside of class the students won’t do it.

[erbear]

Oct 15, 2024 14:42:18 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Oct 15, 2024 14:28:00 GMT -5 cville said:

@@
My 9th grader is in advanced/honors ELA and has been asked to read ONE book this year, so far as I'm aware. And it was by Stephen King (not one of the horror ones; something history or something, which, why?).

I'm trying to figure out what this is, his autobiography? "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft"?

I bet it was 11/22/63. Which is a great book.

[sent]

I opened the article expecting to be shaking my cane - I do think my middle schooler is not being challenged enough in ELA and that l was about to read about what's to come in her college future. Instead, the article was about a bunch of college literature professors wondering why the students have changed when really they should be redesigning and modernizing their curriculums. I think back to my experience and I despised reading books in high school. It wasn't because I couldn't read a book from cover to cover. Rather it was because the books they told us we had to read were 0% interesting to me. I did not enjoy reading Shakespeare's whatever although my 10th grade English teacher did a good job of teaching us Shakespeare despite me not enjoying Macbeth. I'm certain I would've been ok if I only had to read a section of Macbeth rather than the whole thing. I didn't like books that were pushed as "classics" like Of Mice and Men. I do remember devouring The Joy Luck Club, one of the few books in print at that time that focused on the experiences of Asian people in America. Similarly, I had no problem getting through Roots because it wasn't a white story. Even now as an adult, I almost never read fiction books and I hardly seek fiction reading material online. I can still get through a non-fiction book cover to cover if I have a reason to read the book.

[basilosaurus]

Oct 15, 2024 16:37:53 GMT -5 picksthemusic said:

DD is in 7th and they are reading The Outsiders. They are reading along with an audiobook in class. DH has an issue with it - I do not, as I see audiobooks as books and listening is just as good (if not better than) reading to yourself.

This would drive me bonkers since reading for me is much faster than listening. I'm sure I would read ahead and be done with the book and then have to sit there fuming while listening in class. Or am I interpreting this incorrectly? Maybe they read outsiders and listen to another book. 

[morecoffeeplease]

@

I am an elementary reading specialist in Virginia. Virginia just passed the Virginia literacy act. I don’t know how other districts are interpreting the act but our district has made it extremely clear that we are not allowed to deviate any ELA instruction from the core curriculum. So our older elementary students do not read any full books anymore unless it’s during free read time. We have even been instructed no picture book read alouds unless it’s listed in the curriculum. Our fourth and fifth grade teachers lived for their novel studies and now they cannot do them anymore.

[mcppalmbeach]

Oct 15, 2024 14:28:00 GMT -5 cville said:

Oct 15, 2024 13:31:04 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

"Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to."

I'm not an English teacher, but they have told me that they read most of the books in class, the abridged version, because otherwise they won't read at all.

@@
My 9th grader is in advanced/honors ELA and has been asked to read ONE book this year, so far as I'm aware. And it was by Stephen King (not one of the horror ones; something history or something, which, why?).

I don't want to be too shaking my cane, but we read A Tale of Two Cities at the start of our 9th grade lit class. It's a big book. I'm sure some people read the cliff notes. But it set the tone and expectations. Plus it was an easy read.

My sophomore read his first book since 6th grade this semester. He is also in an advanced program and they are big on excerpts and it stabs me in my book loving useless English major heart. I don’t think the canon that was revered back in my day is the be all end all - I’m personally not a fan of Dickens or Melville for sure, but so many wonderful books and ideas they are missing. Reading dense texts taught me to think critically, to have empathy. Snippets don’t cut it. My son will likely never read the Color Purple or the Bluest Eye or Fahrenheit 451 or even the Diary of Anne Frank (he read part of the play in 8th grade, they were supposed to read the whole play but the books never came in 😳).

[underwaterrhymes]

Some interesting things that stood out in this article:

“It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.“

This is true for me and I’m 50. I’m a skimmer. I cannot read every word in a book and I never have been able to. I don’t know why, but this doesn’t surprise me one bit and I really don’t think it’s something unique to this generation.

Also, the other part that stood out to me is this:

“For years, Dames has asked his first-years about their favorite book. In the past, they cited books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Now, he says, almost half of them cite young-adult books. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series seems to be a particular favorite.”

I honestly think it’s wrong to criticize this. My favorite books growing up were Charlotte’s Web, Where the Red Fern Grows, Bridge to Terabithia, It and The Stand. Those are all great! To this day I see people in Gen X saying things like “To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book.” While it is a great novel, I think it’s wonderful if people are saying Percy Jackson is their favorite because to me this says they’re reading for pleasure and they are comfortable admitting what they like to read rather than what they “should” like to read.

@@@

My H is a librarian and books are important in our house. We read almost every night, and he is a big believer that we should encourage kids to read whatever floats their boat. Whether it’s graphic novels or audio books, accessibility is GOOD.

I’ve mentioned our kids are in a private online school and they read a new book every six weeks. Last cycle it was a graphic novel. This cycle, they have offered kids the choice of reading a graphic novel, book, or audio version (same book; just different formats.). I like that they are meeting kids where they’re at and fostering a love of words, however they choose to consume them.

[shauni27]

Oct 15, 2024 13:58:31 GMT -5 tacokick said:

I think a combo of teaching to the test and not assigning novels, getting rid of school libraries and the drop off of programs like DEAR and Book-It have contributed. We were bribed to read as kids! There as a lot of book based TV and movies as well and I don’t see that quite as much.

I swear the thing that really got me into reading more when I was little, aside from my amazing reading intervention specialist who I still remember 35 years later, was the PBS series Wishbone. I loved watching that and learning about these incredible stories made understandable for young kids. They inspired me to read the full texts when I got older.

Some of my favorite high school memories are from my AP English classes when we would read chapters of a book every night and come in and fully discuss them the next day as a class. A Raisin in the Sun, The Great Gadsby, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird...

however, I will forever hate Wuthering Heights and Beowulf. 

[mcppalmbeach]

Oct 15, 2024 19:11:52 GMT -5 arehopsveggies said:

@
Even in primary grades this is happening. The shift from using books for reading instruction to no-illustration decodable passages has been big over the course of my career.

I WANT to combat that with read alouds but I really miss how much I used to be able to dive into book studies even with 6-7 year olds.

My friend teaches high school English and I know she struggles with reading whole books- if she assigns it outside of class the students won’t do it.

My son was in first grade last year and brought home test passages to practice. One was about the development of the vacuum cleaner. Just what little kids want to read!

[neverfstop]

Love all this discussion. I'll have to ask my kids if they read whole books yet, but they do a on of ECA (??) study- where they dissect the characters, plot, theme, and other literary analysis. My 4th grader is a huge reader - she listens to audio books constantly (almost too much!), but finishes quite a few paperback books. She likes graphic novels, but also just finished a series for kids by John Grisham about a (female?) lawyer. My 3rd grader had ADHD & dyslexia, so she really struggles and dislikes reading

As a whole family, we just finished the final Harry Potter book. We started reading them together 2 years ago & it has been such a fun journey for our family - to spend time together, to watch each movie, to visit Orlando, to do Halloween costumes, to play HP monopoly, etc. They are begging me to start Narnia next. I'm almost done with my 55th audiobook for the year, which is bonkers to me!

[konapoppy]

Interesting article, especially as I contemplate my own dip in reading over the last year or so.

The article wasn’t deep enough for my personal liking. There is just so much complexity here, and we really don’t know the full impact of the shift. And while this may be a negative in some ways, there may be some positives to how visual storytelling has become so popular.

[underwaterrhymes]

Oct 16, 2024 8:17:48 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

Interesting article, especially as I contemplate my own dip in reading over the last year or so.

The article wasn’t deep enough for my personal liking. There is just so much complexity here, and we really don’t know the full impact of the shift. And while this may be a negative in some ways, there may be some positives to how visual storytelling has become so popular.

I also think it’s too shallow of an article. If you ask my mom what her favorite book is, she will likely also tell you “To Kill A Mockingbird,” which is what that professor probably wants to hear from his students.

But the woman hasn’t read a book in its entirety since college (with the exception of Shades of Gray and she only read the sexy parts lol). And I think a lot of Boomers probably fall into that category as well.

If we move away from telling people what we think they should read and instead encourage them to read in a way that works for them, they won’t be 74 years old and still saying they don’t like to read and that their favorite book is one that they read in high school as a part of their required reading.

[Jalapeñomel]

Oct 15, 2024 23:13:04 GMT -5 sent said:

I opened the article expecting to be shaking my cane - I do think my middle schooler is not being challenged enough in ELA and that l was about to read about what's to come in her college future. Instead, the article was about a bunch of college literature professors wondering why the students have changed when really they should be redesigning and modernizing their curriculums. I think back to my experience and I despised reading books in high school. It wasn't because I couldn't read a book from cover to cover. Rather it was because the books they told us we had to read were 0% interesting to me. I did not enjoy reading Shakespeare's whatever although my 10th grade English teacher did a good job of teaching us Shakespeare despite me not enjoying Macbeth. I'm certain I would've been ok if I only had to read a section of Macbeth rather than the whole thing. I didn't like books that were pushed as "classics" like Of Mice and Men. I do remember devouring The Joy Luck Club, one of the few books in print at that time that focused on the experiences of Asian people in America. Similarly, I had no problem getting through Roots because it wasn't a white story. Even now as an adult, I almost never read fiction books and I hardly seek fiction reading material online. I can still get through a non-fiction book cover to cover if I have a reason to read the book.

I mean, this is what school is, learning to do things you don't like, because it makes you a better person, smarter citizen, and better reader/decoder.  I spend all day, every day fielding the question, "I'm never going to need this! Why do I have to learn this?"

I do think curriculum can be updated more often and include all types of experiences, but kids will still complain, regardless of how good the book is. 

[konapoppy]

Oct 16, 2024 8:22:03 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

Oct 16, 2024 8:17:48 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

Interesting article, especially as I contemplate my own dip in reading over the last year or so.

The article wasn’t deep enough for my personal liking. There is just so much complexity here, and we really don’t know the full impact of the shift. And while this may be a negative in some ways, there may be some positives to how visual storytelling has become so popular.

I also think it’s too shallow of an article. If you ask my mom what her favorite book is, she will likely also tell you “To Kill A Mockingbird,” which is what that professor probably wants to hear from his students.

But the woman hasn’t read a book in its entirety since college (with the exception of Shades of Gray and she only read the sexy parts lol). And I think a lot of Boomers probably fall into that category as well.

If we move away from telling people what we think they should read and instead encourage them to read in a way that works for them, they won’t be 74 years old and still saying they don’t like to read and that their favorite book is one that they read in high school as a part of their required reading.

I really love how sentiment around reading romance and “women’s lit” (ugh) has shifted in the past few years. There used to be the mail order book clubs, so that existed for decades, but I really feel the current generation has reduced the shame.

I doubt many somehow doubt many profs really celebrate that type of reading in the same way though…

[glw]

I understand that not everyone is going to love leisure reading after school, for multiple reasons. But not reading for fun is one thing, and not being able to read something fully, understand it, be able to revisit it for underlying themes and context, analyze what you've read...that's another. Those are skills that you need, period.

[konapoppy]

Oct 16, 2024 8:36:28 GMT -5 glw said:

I understand that not everyone is going to love leisure reading after school, for multiple reasons. But not reading for fun is one thing, and not being able to read something fully, understand it, be able to revisit it for underlying themes and context, analyze what you've read...that's another. Those are skills that you need, period.

I don’t feel like this article made the case for that. There may be test scores or other data that show this to be true, but the article is mostly anecdotal about students only having the desire and capacity for smaller passages.

Shit, people hardly read emails that are more than three sentences these days.

[underwaterrhymes]

Oct 16, 2024 8:36:28 GMT -5 glw said:

I understand that not everyone is going to love leisure reading after school, for multiple reasons. But not reading for fun is one thing, and not being able to read something fully, understand it, be able to revisit it for underlying themes and context, analyze what you've read...that's another. Those are skills that you need, period.

@@@

Right, but if we offer books to students that are fun to read and let them have a voice, rather than just pushing books that were written 75 years ago, we can build these skills early.

My kids’ school is already having them dissect what they’re reading and respond critically to the material and they’re in 4th and 6th grades respectively. My 4th grader is struggling a bit with this style of learning because he’s so used to worksheets, and he’s having to think about what the book he’s reading means and to answer thoughtful questions about the content. It’s been really terrific to see his progress and I’m excited to see where he will be a year from now.

My older kid just finished Nimona in his class and my younger read AntiHero. Both are graphic novels and they read them over the course of a day because they loved them so much. My younger is about to dive into City of Ember (we got both the graphic novel and the actual book, as well as the Kindle book so I can read along too), and my older child gets to pick his next book along with his class. It’s such an inclusive way of introducing literature and one that I think is the way forward, rather than sticking solely with books that kids were reading back in the 60s. Letting kids have a voice in what they read and exploring how literature makes us feel is something we have never done, and that’s the real failure here, IMO. Multiple choice questions don’t get at the heart of things and that’s what teaching to the test takes away from kids.

I wish all schools were like ours (we are extremely privileged and lucky and I don’t deny that), but obviously, this requires some significant changes in the way public schools are structured. If we start early and offer a variety of options to kids so they’re not pigeonholed into one particular style of content or only classic literature, we position them better for critical thinking in the long term. If a student thinks the only appropriate kind of reading is Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby, they’re not going to want to push further. They’re going to think they hate reading rather than they just haven’t found the style of material that they love.

With regard to critical thinking, obviously that plays a big role throughout life. But I don’t think that’s a skill we have built into any generation. Lack of critical thinking is not new.

[glw]

Oct 16, 2024 9:00:21 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

Oct 16, 2024 8:36:28 GMT -5 glw said:

I understand that not everyone is going to love leisure reading after school, for multiple reasons. But not reading for fun is one thing, and not being able to read something fully, understand it, be able to revisit it for underlying themes and context, analyze what you've read...that's another. Those are skills that you need, period.

I don’t feel like this article made the case for that. There may be test scores or other data that show this to be true, but the article is mostly anecdotal about students only having the desire and capacity for smaller passages.

Shit, people hardly read emails that are more than three sentences these days.

Which is exactly my point-- often one needs to read and process the first paragraph(s) of a long email in order to understand the context, and not just firing off a response that doesn't apply, or asking follow-up questions that are already explained in the email. And you need to remember what is in that email so that I don't have to explain this same thing for the 5th goddamn time, Susan.

[wildrice]

Oct 16, 2024 8:26:43 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Oct 15, 2024 23:13:04 GMT -5 sent said:

I opened the article expecting to be shaking my cane - I do think my middle schooler is not being challenged enough in ELA and that l was about to read about what's to come in her college future. Instead, the article was about a bunch of college literature professors wondering why the students have changed when really they should be redesigning and modernizing their curriculums. I think back to my experience and I despised reading books in high school. It wasn't because I couldn't read a book from cover to cover. Rather it was because the books they told us we had to read were 0% interesting to me. I did not enjoy reading Shakespeare's whatever although my 10th grade English teacher did a good job of teaching us Shakespeare despite me not enjoying Macbeth. I'm certain I would've been ok if I only had to read a section of Macbeth rather than the whole thing. I didn't like books that were pushed as "classics" like Of Mice and Men. I do remember devouring The Joy Luck Club, one of the few books in print at that time that focused on the experiences of Asian people in America. Similarly, I had no problem getting through Roots because it wasn't a white story. Even now as an adult, I almost never read fiction books and I hardly seek fiction reading material online. I can still get through a non-fiction book cover to cover if I have a reason to read the book.

I mean, this is what school is, learning to do things you don't like, because it makes you a better person, smarter citizen, and better reader/decoder.  I spend all day, every day fielding the question, "I'm never going to need this! Why do I have to learn this?"

I do think curriculum can be updated more often and include all types of experiences, but kids will still complain, regardless of how good the book is. 

I agree, but also disagree that the classics are necessary to achieve this.

Anecdote but I was a voracious reader as a kid. Once I hit middle school and we started reading books that felt like a slog, though, I stopped reading for pleasure - there wasn't time and reading started to feel like a chore instead of an enjoyable activity. I didn't really start reading again until my 20s, and I love reading as an adult.

I think reading things you don't love is ok, but I think that with such a huge variety of good books that have been published, the focus on old books with funky outdated language isn't necessary. They also tend to be about less diverse characters and themes that may be less relatable than many more modern books. I read over 50 books a year most years and credit them with so much of what I have learned and grown from as an adult. But none of them have been classics.

[glw]

Oct 16, 2024 9:03:37 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

Oct 16, 2024 8:36:28 GMT -5 glw said:

I understand that not everyone is going to love leisure reading after school, for multiple reasons. But not reading for fun is one thing, and not being able to read something fully, understand it, be able to revisit it for underlying themes and context, analyze what you've read...that's another. Those are skills that you need, period.

@@@

Right, but if we offer books to students that are fun to read and let them have a voice, rather than just pushing books that were written 75 years ago, we can build these skills early.

I totally agree. But assigning passages rather than full books (regardless of whether they are "canon"), and students "not being able to" read full books is what I was getting at.

[melmaria]

Oct 15, 2024 13:25:06 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

One thing that wasn't brought up was how we're losing the ability to empathize with others if we're not allowed to read about our shared human experience.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment here, but I think the article actually does touch on this a bit:

“The economic survival of the publishing industry requires an audience willing and able to spend time with an extended piece of writing. But as readers of a literary magazine will surely appreciate, more than a venerable industry is at stake. Books can cultivate a sophisticated form of empathy, transporting a reader into the mind of someone who lived hundreds of years ago, or a person who lives in a radically different context from the reader’s own. “A lot of contemporary ideas of empathy are built on identification, identity politics,” Kahn, the Berkeley professor, said. “Reading is more complicated than that, so it enlarges your sympathies.”

Yet such benefits require staying with a character through their journey; they cannot be approximated by reading a five- or even 30-page excerpt. According to the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, so-called deep reading—sustained immersion in a text—stimulates a number of valuable mental habits, including critical thinking and self-reflection, in ways that skimming or reading in short bursts does not.”

I read this article a while ago and found it devastating. (Another former English major signing in). Completely agree that (1) teachers having to teach to the test/follow certain state standards have sucked all the joy out of reading and (2) personal handheld screens have destroyed attention spans for everyone, including adults. My H and I personally make a conscious effort to model reading real books in front of our kids, and we do very little screen time at home, but it’s still fighting an impossible battle when society and education have shifted in this direction.

[Jalapeñomel]

Oct 16, 2024 9:07:06 GMT -5 wildrice said:

Oct 16, 2024 8:26:43 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

I mean, this is what school is, learning to do things you don't like, because it makes you a better person, smarter citizen, and better reader/decoder.  I spend all day, every day fielding the question, "I'm never going to need this! Why do I have to learn this?"

I do think curriculum can be updated more often and include all types of experiences, but kids will still complain, regardless of how good the book is. 

I agree, but also disagree that the classics are necessary to achieve this.

Anecdote but I was a voracious reader as a kid. Once I hit middle school and we started reading books that felt like a slog, though, I stopped reading for pleasure - there wasn't time and reading started to feel like a chore instead of an enjoyable activity. I didn't really start reading again until my 20s, and I love reading as an adult.

I think reading things you don't love is ok, but I think that with such a huge variety of good books that have been published, the focus on old books with funky outdated language isn't necessary. They also tend to be about less diverse characters and themes that may be less relatable than many more modern books. I read over 50 books a year most years and credit them with so much of what I have learned and grown from as an adult. But none of them have been classics.

I think you need a variety, but you also need some of those classics. Like sent said, add in Roots or other books written by non-white authors, drop in some Shakespeare, with the funky language. That's part of literature's history, and I don't think we should ignore that. 

[underwaterrhymes]

Oct 16, 2024 9:07:52 GMT -5 glw said:

Oct 16, 2024 9:03:37 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

@@@

Right, but if we offer books to students that are fun to read and let them have a voice, rather than just pushing books that were written 75 years ago, we can build these skills early.

I totally agree. But assigning passages rather than full books (regardless of whether they are "canon"), and students "not being able to" read full books is what I was getting at.

I don’t disagree, but I think the bigger problem is that when we are teaching literature it needs to be diverse, inclusive, and varied in format. If students aren’t reading whole books it’s because they haven’t been introduced to books that make them feel things or because professors are shaming them for loving books like Percy Jackson.

[sent]

Oct 16, 2024 8:26:43 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Oct 15, 2024 23:13:04 GMT -5 sent said:

I opened the article expecting to be shaking my cane - I do think my middle schooler is not being challenged enough in ELA and that l was about to read about what's to come in her college future. Instead, the article was about a bunch of college literature professors wondering why the students have changed when really they should be redesigning and modernizing their curriculums. I think back to my experience and I despised reading books in high school. It wasn't because I couldn't read a book from cover to cover. Rather it was because the books they told us we had to read were 0% interesting to me. I did not enjoy reading Shakespeare's whatever although my 10th grade English teacher did a good job of teaching us Shakespeare despite me not enjoying Macbeth. I'm certain I would've been ok if I only had to read a section of Macbeth rather than the whole thing. I didn't like books that were pushed as "classics" like Of Mice and Men. I do remember devouring The Joy Luck Club, one of the few books in print at that time that focused on the experiences of Asian people in America. Similarly, I had no problem getting through Roots because it wasn't a white story. Even now as an adult, I almost never read fiction books and I hardly seek fiction reading material online. I can still get through a non-fiction book cover to cover if I have a reason to read the book.

I mean, this is what school is, learning to do things you don't like, because it makes you a better person, smarter citizen, and better reader/decoder.  I spend all day, every day fielding the question, "I'm never going to need this! Why do I have to learn this?"

I do think curriculum can be updated more often and include all types of experiences, but kids will still complain, regardless of how good the book is. 

Sure but in a subject like Literature, there is a huge variety of books and there are new books coming out each year. We don't have to force students to read The Great Gatsby just because it was declared a "classic" decades ago when today there may be a more culturally relevant book they can read to learn the same themes. At least that's my view of it.

Whereas in science, the facts don't change that rapidly. Oxygen is still an element, a cell still has a nucleus. But Pluto may or may not be a planet.

[taratru]

To me, the greatest loss when people stop reading literature is the loss of imagining - other experiences, other lives, other worlds. I think there's a direct connection to our current societal inability to recognize the humanity in others.

Yes, hard skills can be taught with non-fiction and excerpts, but the human part comes from immersion into a story that isn't our own. I hate that we are losing that.

[glw]

Oct 16, 2024 9:17:16 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

If students aren’t reading whole books it’s because they haven’t been introduced to books that make them feel things or because professors are shaming them for loving books like Percy Jackson.

And I think it's because we have been conditioned to consume video media of 30 seconds-or-less, or very short written passages without having to slog through the "boring parts" which provide all the context. 

(sorry my quote got messed up)

[melmaria]

Oct 16, 2024 9:17:16 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

Oct 16, 2024 9:07:52 GMT -5 glw said:

I totally agree. But assigning passages rather than full books (regardless of whether they are "canon"), and students "not being able to" read full books is what I was getting at.

I don’t disagree, but I think the bigger problem is that when we are teaching literature it needs to be diverse, inclusive, and varied in format. If students aren’t reading whole books it’s because they haven’t been introduced to books that make them feel things or because professors are shaming them for loving books like Percy Jackson.

Students shouldn’t be shamed for liking Percy Jackson but there is also value to sometimes having to read and think about things that aren’t necessarily immediately appealing/interesting to you. Empathy, exposure to ideas/perspectives you otherwise wouldn’t have had, critical thinking, etc.

On a different (but related) point - obviously, not everyone ultimately chooses a profession that has to do a ton of reading, but as a lawyer, I have to read all sorts of shit all day long that can be boring as shit. Being able to read and process/understand stuff that may not be personally interesting to me is fundamental to my job. It’s a skill that, like anything else, requires practice. If kids don’t practice these skills, they aren’t going to develop them. And then we get to a place where people won’t/can’t read and process 5 paragraph work emails, a la the comment above.

[Jalapeñomel]

The last part of the article: "I can imagine worse preparations for the trials, and thrills, of Lit Hum. Riordan’s series, although full of frothy action and sometimes sophomoric humor, also cleverly engages in a literary exercise as old as the Western canon: spinning new adventures for the petulant gods and compromised heroes of Greek mythology. But of course there is a reason that, despite millennia of reinterpretations, we’ve never forgotten the originals. To understand the human condition, and to appreciate humankind’s greatest achievements, you still need to read The Iliad—all of it."