@ Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

[fumbalina]

Oct 16, 2024 6:51:06 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

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.

I think they are just giving more honest answers. I knew no one in my honors classes that liked those books at all, we read them to check off the grade level list and few of us ever considered them again. 

[fumbalina]

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

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

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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"?

It is sort of a memoir. It is about what it means to be an author and how the only way to become a good writer is by practicing. If I recall, it talks about both the imagination and grammar techniques to be a successful writer. I suspect it was chosen so the teacher can fit some grammar lessons in to her day. 

[pixy0stix]

Oct 16, 2024 17:10:09 GMT -5 fumbalina said:

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

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

It is sort of a memoir. It is about what it means to be an author and how the only way to become a good writer is by practicing. If I recall, it talks about both the imagination and grammar techniques to be a successful writer. I suspect it was chosen so the teacher can fit some grammar lessons in to her day. 

That's what I was going to say if she remembered what it was. It fits for an English class.

[meganew]

None of this will matter in 10 years when the majority of students cannot read at all.

[abs]

Oct 16, 2024 19:24:31 GMT -5 meganew said:

None of this will matter in 10 years when the majority of students cannot read at all.

Or write because they are using AI. Which is happening now.

[basilosaurus]

Oct 16, 2024 12:18:29 GMT -5 smock said:

Oct 16, 2024 6:51:06 GMT -5 underwaterrhymes said:

“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.

That's such a good point – there's way less shaming today for liking "popular" books/music/movies. What 20 year old TRUTHFULLY says Wuthering Heights is their FAVORITE book!?! Maybe these professors just got used to college students giving the "right" answer.

I wonder if the Gen Zers in college are just being more honest all around? Maybe they're confessing when they don't do the reading, rather than lying and faking their way through class discussions. 

Not wuthering heights because defintely not that, but some of the most impactful and sometimes enjoyable books I've read were assigned in school. 

I do think there's a time and a place for excerpts. Showing and analyizing different writing styles is good for excerpts. Learning the skill to analyze short passages to get full meaning (short passages that are considered novel length in today's email terms). But, can you really understand the messages of 1984, animal farm, fahrenheit 451, without reading the whole thing? I chose those 3 for being kind of on the same trend, but this applies to any topic. The "how did we start here and end there" is a huge power of books.

[kitty]

Oct 16, 2024 12:04:42 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Oct 16, 2024 11:34:34 GMT -5 kitty said:

I think we would be better off as a society if more people retained what they learned in science and math classes and did use those skills regularly.

Maybe we wouldn't have as much misinformation about climate change to combat or as many people falling prey to predatory lending or so much disregard for the entire public health field if some of these things were thought of as something everyone should use every day.

I knew I was going to major in STEM and purposely chose a liberal arts school because I wanted to have a well-rounded education for my undergrad degree so I'm not advocating for STEM at the exclusion of everything else. I think it is all important to end up with a society of critical thinkers.

I hate to burst your bubble, but none of that is STEM related. It's all based in the humanities fields. I don't have to understand the nuances to be able to trust the science if I can reason it out.

I don't have to understand the process from studying bread mold to the advent of penicillin to see how the advent of that medicine changed the course of human history. I get that information from scientists (and historians) synthesizing the information into relatable chunks that the layperson can understand, which is a humanities based skill. Critical thinking is a humanities skill.

A concrete example of this is when Michael Crichton published The State of Fear and used a paper published by the soil lab I was working for to erroneously back up his information. The director of the lab had me buy, read, and synthesize his argument and then draft a response. She didn't ask he colleagues, she didn't ask her grad students, she asked me - a newly minted English grad with an education minor - to do this. Because she knew that her and her colleagues response would be too technical and she felt it was important to reach all audiences.

I think you are underestimating your level of science literacy.

Blind trust in experts isn't enough. The layperson still needs to have some understanding of scientific practices and have some base level of prior knowledge to interact meaningfully with various sources of scientific expertise and connect the science with their lived experience. They need to be able to not only consider what is said but also how to evaluate who said it, which requires knowing things about the difference between correlation and causation, how the scientific community reaches consensus, how to find who funded the study in question, and in many cases some understanding about probability and statistics.

I think the most important thing to come out of my education was not technical knowledge of the extremely niche area I studied for my dissertation but the way I learned to think and interact with the world - problem solving, critical thinking, figuring out how to do something that had never been done before.

To bring this back to the article, I think whether the largest driver of this is student attention spans vs state mandated curricula changes is an important question. If it is the former, I would expect to start to see spillover into all domains in which someone has to read large quantities of potentially "boring" material. How will college and grad students be able to read numerous long, dense scientific articles if they can't even handle Jane Eyre?

Anecdotally I heard recently that the grad students in one department where I work dissolved their journal club this year so maybe they don't want to read either?

[taratru]

Oct 17, 2024 10:33:12 GMT -5 kitty said:

Oct 16, 2024 12:04:42 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I hate to burst your bubble, but none of that is STEM related. It's all based in the humanities fields. I don't have to understand the nuances to be able to trust the science if I can reason it out.

I don't have to understand the process from studying bread mold to the advent of penicillin to see how the advent of that medicine changed the course of human history. I get that information from scientists (and historians) synthesizing the information into relatable chunks that the layperson can understand, which is a humanities based skill. Critical thinking is a humanities skill.

A concrete example of this is when Michael Crichton published The State of Fear and used a paper published by the soil lab I was working for to erroneously back up his information. The director of the lab had me buy, read, and synthesize his argument and then draft a response. She didn't ask he colleagues, she didn't ask her grad students, she asked me - a newly minted English grad with an education minor - to do this. Because she knew that her and her colleagues response would be too technical and she felt it was important to reach all audiences.

I think you are underestimating your level of science literacy.

Blind trust in experts isn't enough. The layperson still needs to have some understanding of scientific practices and have some base level of prior knowledge to interact meaningfully with various sources of scientific expertise and connect the science with their lived experience. They need to be able to not only consider what is said but also how to evaluate who said it, which requires knowing things about the difference between correlation and causation, how the scientific community reaches consensus, how to find who funded the study in question, and in many cases some understanding about probability and statistics.

I think the most important thing to come out of my education was not technical knowledge of the extremely niche area I studied for my dissertation but the way I learned to think and interact with the world - problem solving, critical thinking, figuring out how to do something that had never been done before.

This isn't science literacy...this is...literacy. Everything you're describing is based in reading skills, which is why they matter so damn much. People need to have them before they can master content and then they *should* be applying them to everything - science, math, language. If students aren't reading, they will NEVER be able to do anything else. There are thousands of studies that support this, why are you digging in on the "actually science is better" part? pixy0stix said STEM fields aren't *as* hard, not that they aren't hard at all. 

[pixy0stix]

Oct 17, 2024 20:35:29 GMT -5 taratru said:

Oct 17, 2024 10:33:12 GMT -5 kitty said:

I think you are underestimating your level of science literacy.

Blind trust in experts isn't enough. The layperson still needs to have some understanding of scientific practices and have some base level of prior knowledge to interact meaningfully with various sources of scientific expertise and connect the science with their lived experience. They need to be able to not only consider what is said but also how to evaluate who said it, which requires knowing things about the difference between correlation and causation, how the scientific community reaches consensus, how to find who funded the study in question, and in many cases some understanding about probability and statistics.

I think the most important thing to come out of my education was not technical knowledge of the extremely niche area I studied for my dissertation but the way I learned to think and interact with the world - problem solving, critical thinking, figuring out how to do something that had never been done before.

This isn't science literacy...this is...literacy. Everything you're describing is based in reading skills, which is why they matter so damn much. People need to have them before they can master content and then they *should* be applying them to everything - science, math, language. If students aren't reading, they will NEVER be able to do anything else. There are thousands of studies that support this, why are you digging in on the "actually science is better" part? pixy0stix said STEM fields aren't *as* hard, not that they aren't hard at all. 

I was going to type out a reply, but instead I will just like this a billion times.

[neverfstop]

This was another interesting piece.

There’s a Very Good Reason College Students Don’t Read Anymore
GIFT www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/opinion/college-university-students-reading.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VE4.daFG.6gFU4LxVAx2Q&smid=url-share

In that vision, productivity does not depend on labor, and a paycheck has little to do with talent or effort. For decades, students have been told that college is about career readiness and little else. And the task of puzzling out an author’s argument will not prepare students to thrive in an economy that seems to run on vibes.

---------------

Once students graduate, the jobs they most ardently desire are in what they proudly call the “sellout” fields of finance, consulting and tech. To outsiders, these industries are abstract and opaque, trading on bluster and jargon. One thing is certain, though: That’s where the money is.

[sonrisa]

I’m seeing the opposite with my kid in 5th grade.

They are expected to reach a certain ‘AR goal’ each semester through half an hour of home reading Mon-Thirs. (They choose the books, read at home, then take quizzes on what they read for points). But these goals are set way too high for their ability which kills their interest in reading. They’d have to finish a Harry Potter book each week with perfect recall to reach their goal - and Harry Potter isn’t a 2 hour read for them. So every week we are pulling teeth on reading and they hate it

[basilosaurus]

I'm someone can read 200 pages/day, which I did all the time before smart phones and streaming tv. I do it far less frequently now because, even with no notifications, I usually have to switch to airplane mode to not let it be a temptation. And then when I'm back online, I'll have messages from my very few local friends wondering where I am, why I haven't responded, multiple phone calls, concerned "why aren't you answering? Is everything ok?."

Yes, people, I'm ok. I'm sitting on a beach on a tropical island enjoying getting fully stuck into a book. Knock it off.

Just like the workplace expecting people to be available at all hours, I feel like that's a social expectation, too. I have a friend who will interupt me mid-sentence because someone is calling. It's really fucking annoying, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's pressured by family to do this. I can only imagine how much more ingrained that is in the current college students. They know no other world. And surely that has an impact on not just full books but everything else that requires a dedicated attention span.

I bristle at the article, though, at saying everyone needs to read all of the Iliad. Fuck that. Just because it's been part of the (white male elite) canon forever doesn't mean it sacred and can never be reevaluated. Sure, knowing greek mythology is pretty key to understanding later literature, but that's not the one and only way.

Now, an entire class based on modern retellings? Sign me up. I loved Circe and have Penelopiad on my list. Kinda like how as much as I love originalish Arthurian legends but far preferred the books from other points of view like morgan le fay and lady of the lake.