Posted on 06/27/2017 3:39:36 PM PDT by LibWhacker
To gain admittance to college in the 17th century, students had to be able to read and translate various Latin authors on sight. 100 years ago, students were required to have read various classical works before being admitted.
Today, however, many American students are being admitted to colleges without ever having read a book from start to finish. They are part of a cohort of students known as “book virgins.”
The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has pointed out this phenomenon in their recent report titled “Beach Books: 2014-2016. What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class?” The report offers a detailed assessment of the books that colleges across America recommend to their students before they begin classes in the fall.
The reading level of these books is oftentimes very low, meant to cater to the group of students who are “book virgins”:
“The desire to appeal to incoming students who have rarely if ever read an adult book on their own… lead selection committees to choose low-grade ‘accessible’ works that are presumed to appeal to ‘book virgins’ who will flee actual college-level reading… [S]uch ‘book virgins’ have to be wooed with simple, unchallenging works.”
And how many “book virgins” are there among entering college freshmen? According to NAS' David Randall—who drew upon NEA and Pew statistics—about 4 million, which represents about 20% of the entering freshmen class. Sadly, these students have discovered that they can receive adequate, and even good, grades in high school without ever reading a page of assigned texts.
For many students today, it’s considered an embarrassment not to have lost one’s virginity before going to college.
Would that more were embarrassed about being “book virgins.”
I got the highest grade on our middle school Profiles in Courage book report. After the teacher passed out all the papers and complained about the quality of the writing, she asked how many people had not finished the book. Some raised their hands. She then asked how many people had only read half the book. Some more hands. Then she asked if anyone hadn’t even opened the book, and I was the only one to raise my hand. I read the back cover and asked a friend what it was about. ;)
But I was no virgin.
Universities are primarily focused on research funding. Student tuition payments account for a small percentage.
***I hated the books I was assigned to read***
Same here! The one I really hated was Silas Mariner. Like so many of these classics it was D-U-L-L!
When I read on my own the first was CAPTAIN BLOOD trilogy. Coronado’s Children and Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver.
I managed to get an adult card at the library and from then on it was adventures! None of these teen books for boys for me!
Beau Geste trilogy. Beat to Quarters trilogy, and others of that series.
Manila Galleon, THE SARACEN BLADE. the Odyessy.
Lots of science fiction! Jules Verne and H.P.Lovecraft, Dracula.
It was all adventure books and ancient history for me!
War novels.
Strange, I really wasn’t into Westerns at all except for some old war time printings for our soldiers.
It kept me sane in my teen years.
They also had to be able to read Greek and at the end of their college they had to be able to debate their professors in Latin.
This was what was required of our Founding Fathers who graduated from a colonial college, which was about half of our Founders.
Most of the other Founders who did not go to college did study Latin and Greek, like Ben Franklin.
Our Constitution could have been written in Latin and debated in a Latin.
I was like you, started reading at three and a half - both my parents were educators. That was a long time ago when educators really educated.
Read Dr. Zhivago when I was twelve, read shorter books, usually one a day in junior high, majored in English and philosophy in college. Read lots of books both assigned and on my own. In English and in French.
After my useless college degree I went to a voc-tech to learn a craft to actually earn a living.
Still read a lot both for work and lots of fiction. Especially like both Lee Child and Lincoln Child as well as Clive Cussler. All of them have action and suspense. Probably should re-read the classics, but just seem more interested in escapist fiction for the last few years.
Trying to explain the joys of reading to a non-reader seems like explaining Impressionist painting to the blind.
I was lucky, Mom taught me to read at home before I started school; Grimm’s fairy tales, Aesop’s fables, Asterix and Obelix, Tin-Tin, what ever, as long as I read.
By the third grade I had my first library card and Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Morte d’ Arthur, Haliburton’s books of marvels, Gene Rhodes western stories were a world opened before me.
To add to your recommendations could I suggest John LeCarre’s Cold war era novels, especially “A Perfect Spy” , Robert Graves’ “Goodbye to All That” WWI memoir as well as the Claudius novels and “The White Goddess”, Izaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler”...and I should stop, it’s late.
Started going to libraries when I was 9 and became a voracious reader. Took a pre-college word comprehension test in high school.and it claimed I had the vocabulary of a senior.
College senior - not HS senior.....
Yes, yes. Do go on, LOL.
The schools are not helping these children.
Don’t you know anything about education?
Konosuba was great, I don’t think I’ve heard about the other show you mentioned. Replying on my tablet right now so I don’t have my usual capability for looking up stuff.
Did you watch Attack on Titan?
.. and the nonfiction Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
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Thought that was a great book. But I think he got descartes wrong—but then mostly because the writer is a unitarian like his father. Also his take on OT people seemed off to me. But then I’m not averse to supenatural explanations.
For example three years ago I went through a non invasive cryogenic ablation that cured my atrial fibrillation. It was a four hour procedure in a bitter cold room filled with computers. I was out cold and out of the hospital the next day and back at the gym working out a week later. To the doctor it was a day at work. But the procedure was pure science fiction 10 years before. To me what happened was a miracle.
All that said, the author does a very creditable job of describing the change in consciousness that occurred in the first millenium BC in the middle eastern basin. As well, he does a great job of showing how the new world indians that the spanish encountered were much like the ancient near east of the 3rd millenium bc.
Thanks for the interlude.
My child is going into 1st grade next year and has a reading list for the summer.
The school is private and conservative, so I was surprised that many of the books focused on social justice and brown people being oppressed: MLK, the 1st black ballerina, etc.
My position is that those topics are wholly inappropriate and irrelevant to preparing young people to life and reality. Not just 1st graders, but any age group. It’s divisive racial propaganda that ultimately demeans white people.
Then I saw that the list was taken from the surrounding PUBLIC school district.
Somebody got lazy. I don’t know if I want to raise a stink. I haven’t even met the teacher.
All I know is that I am obligated to protect my children from this repulsive cancer.
Snow crash was a great read!
Good luck! We used to get a lot of Dickens, etc..
“Snow Crash” was good. My first was “Cryptonomicron” which is very good. I liked “Diamond Age” but burned out on the trilogy. “System of the World” if I recall. The author appears to have been in hibernation for a decade or so.
I homeschooled my children and used this website as a guide to pick books from. This is an example of the 10-12 grade reading list.
10-12 Literature
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
All Creatures Great and Small and others by James Herriot
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque
Amazing Adventures of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
American Leonardo by Carleton Mabee
Americanization of Edward Bok by Edward Bok
And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
Animal Farm; 1984 by George Orwell
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Autobiography by Benvenuto Cellini
Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt
Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton
Barchester Towers and others by Anthony Trollope
Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Bible in Spain by George Borrows
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys by John Buchan
Borden of Yale by Mrs. Howard Taylor
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Burning Bush and others by Sigrid Undset
Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead
Cabinet of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac
Captain Cook’s Explorations by James Cook
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Charterhouse of Parma and others by Stendahl
Chivalry and others by James Branch Cabell
Conquest of Granada by Washington Irving
Contender by Robert Lipsyte
Covenant and other historical fiction by James A. Michener
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cripps, the Carrier by Richard Blackmore
Crisis by Thomas Paine
Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson
Cruise of the “Nona” and others by Hilaire Belloc
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Darwin’s Black Box by Michel Behe
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Death of Ivan Ilyitch by Leo Tolstoy
Death of the Gods by Dmitri Merejkowski
Diary & Autobiography of John Adams edited by L. Butterfield
Diary by David Brainerd
Diary of a Country Priest and others by George Bernanos
Dream Thief by Stephen R. Lawhead
Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
Emma by Jane Austen
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton
Every Living Thing by James Herriot
Experience the Depths of Jesus Christ by Madame Jeanne Guyon
Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography by Hans Christian Anderson
Fathers and Sons and others by Ivan Turgenev
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Four Voyages to the New World by Christopher Columbus
Foxe’s Christian Martyrs by John Foxe, edited by W. Grinton Berry
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Green Mansions and others by William H. Hudson
Heart of Darkness and others by Joseph Conrad
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland H. Bainton
House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga, translated by D. H. Lawrence
House of Seven Gables and others by Nathaniel Hawthorne
How I Found Livingstone by Sir Henry Morton Stanley
Iceland Fisherman and others by Pierre Loti
In This Sign by Joanne Greenburg
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jerusalem and others by Selma Lagerlof
Journal by George Fox
Journal by John Wesley
Lalla Rookh by Tom Moore
Lavengro by George Borrows
Life of Columbus by Washington Irving
Life of George Washington by Washington Irving
Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
Lord Peter and other mysteries by Dorothy Sayers
Lorna Doone by Richard D. Blackmore
Man Called Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
Martin Chuzzelwitt by Charles Dickens
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Moby Dick and others by Herman Melville
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
My Antonia by Willa Cather
My Confession by Leo Tolstoy
Old Creole Days and others by George Washington Cable
Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
On Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and others by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Paradise War and others in trilogy by Stephen R. Lawhead
Peace Child by Don Richardson
Pere Goirot by Honore de Balzac
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Pillar of Iron and other historical fiction by Taylor Caldwell
Power & the Glory and other historical fiction by Graham Greene
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Prisoner of Zenda and others by Anthony Hope Hawkins
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Rabble in Arms and others by Kenneth Roberts
Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson
Raven: a Biography of Sam Houston and other biographies by Marquis James
Red and The Black by Stendahl
Romany Rye by George Borrows
Roots of the Mountains by William Morris
Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone
Scott’s Last Expedition by Robert Scott
Sense and Sensibility and others by Jane Austen
Servant of Slaves and others by Grace Irwin
Sevastopol Sketches and others by Leo Tolstoy
Shadows on the Park by Willa Cather
Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs by William Morris
Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
Song of the Scaffold by Gertrud von Le Fort
Tale of the South Downs by Richard Blackmore
Taliesin and others in series by Stephen R. Lawhead
Thirty Nine Steps and others by John Buchan
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Tom Jones and others by Henry Fielding
Travels in Arabian Deserts by Charles Doughty
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Virginians and others by William Makepeace Thackery
Voyages to the New World by Hakluyt
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
War of the Worldviews by Gary DeMar
Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Witness by Whittaker Chambers
The website has a lot more suggestions and I would even say it would be great for people of all ages to read from.
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