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Elite colleges shocked to discover students ‘don’t know how’ to read books: ‘My jaw dropped’
NY Post ^ | October 4, 2024 | By Lindsay Kornick

Posted on 10/04/2024 9:44:17 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer

Several university professors expressed concerns to the Atlantic about students who come to college unable to read full-length books.

Assistant editor Rose Horowitch spoke to several teachers from elite schools like Columbia, Georgetown and Stanford, who each described the phenomenon of students being overwhelmed by the prospect of reading entire books.

Columbia University humanities professor Nicholas Dames described feeling “bewildered” when a first-year student told him that she had never been required to read a full book at her public high school.

“My jaw dropped,” Dames said.

Some professors do find a few students up to the task, but described them as “now more exceptions” rather than the rule, with others “shutting down” when facing difficult texts.

“Daniel Shore, the chair of Georgetown’s English department, told me that his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet,” Horowitch wrote.

“It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading,” she said. “It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: arth; books; college; democrats; education

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1 posted on 10/04/2024 9:44:17 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Those professors had better shut their pie holes, or they’ll find themselves unemployed.


2 posted on 10/04/2024 9:46:28 AM PDT by brownsfan (It's going to take real, serious, hard times to wake the American public.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

“elite schools”


3 posted on 10/04/2024 9:46:32 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire, or both.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

I think the Internet is causing people to have short attention spans.


4 posted on 10/04/2024 9:46:47 AM PDT by Dalberg-Acton
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

My son read full adult books in the second grade. But it came naturally to him.


5 posted on 10/04/2024 9:46:52 AM PDT by gitmo (If your theology doesn’t become your biography, what good is it?)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Parents are in charge of their children’s education. Period.

They let their kids go to these neglectful institutions while he women are out keeping up with their non family pursuits and men are wimpy and confused

The kids are the ones who suffer then our country

What are we doing to take care of this countrymen future?

This?

This is factual


6 posted on 10/04/2024 9:48:57 AM PDT by stanne
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To: stanne

>> Parents are in charge of their children’s education. Period.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It’s shocking how few parents show up for our local school board meetings. As in, typically, ZERO.


7 posted on 10/04/2024 9:51:35 AM PDT by Nervous Tick ("First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people...": ISLAM is the problem!)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

They don’t know how? They can’t read? Or is it that they can’t stay focused?


8 posted on 10/04/2024 9:51:50 AM PDT by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: Dalberg-Acton

I think you’re exactly right. It has ‘trained’ us to take information in small, quick gulps.


9 posted on 10/04/2024 9:51:53 AM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

The warning signs should have been obvious just listening to our “talent” in the media, both televised and print.


10 posted on 10/04/2024 9:52:57 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: monkeyshine

>> Or is it that they can’t stay focused?

I’m betting it’s that reason.


11 posted on 10/04/2024 9:53:18 AM PDT by Nervous Tick ("First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people...": ISLAM is the problem!)
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To: stanne

Teach them to read xrays instead, then they work for the US Food and Drug Administration. What could it hurt? That would be better than having Tampon Tim as VP.


12 posted on 10/04/2024 9:53:51 AM PDT by Colt1851Navy (What was wrong with Nixon?)
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To: Nervous Tick

I thought parents who go to school board meetings ended up on FBI terrorist watch lists.


13 posted on 10/04/2024 9:53:53 AM PDT by gitmo (If your theology doesn’t become your biography, what good is it?)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
My wife has taught as an adjunct for 20 years. Most students read only textbooks, being spoon fed nice, predigested summaries of information.

They have zero capacity to read primary sources and summarize the information themselves. In brief, they were never required by public schools to learn how to study, analyze or even take notes.

And the worst are ignorant minorities passed along by social promotion who "earned" a HSD and think they are entitled to expect the same in college.

All those taxpayer dollars going to teachers unions who buy themselves an exemption from any accountability.

14 posted on 10/04/2024 9:54:37 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens" )
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
--- "It's that they don't know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to."

"Part of the reason for the rising anti-intellectualism can be found in the declining state of education in the U.S. compared to other advanced countries.... Fashion, entertainment, spectacle, voyeurism – we're directed towards trivia, towards the inconsequential, towards unquestioning and blatant consumerism. This results in intellectual complacency. People accept without questioning, believe without weighing the choices, join the pack because in a culture where convenience rules, real individualism is too hard work. Thinking takes too much time: it gets in the way of the immediacy of the online experience."

Anti-Intellectualism and the "Dumbing Down" of America

15 posted on 10/04/2024 9:55:07 AM PDT by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: Dalberg-Acton

Yep, seems like it causes a form of ADD


16 posted on 10/04/2024 9:55:23 AM PDT by jpp113
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Because less than 3 percent of you people read books.

Because less than 15 percent of you read newspapers.

Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube.

Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube.

This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation.

This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers.

This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world.

And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people.

-Howard Beale (Network 1977)


17 posted on 10/04/2024 9:55:53 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Dalberg-Acton
I think the Internet is causing people to have short attention spans.

Yes, and it isn't only young folks. I meet people of all ages who never crack a book. They expect to be spoon-fed information.

18 posted on 10/04/2024 9:56:28 AM PDT by fidelis (Ecce Crucem Domini! Fugite partes adversae! Vicit Leo de tribu Juda, Radix David! Alleluia!)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

It doesn’t matter, citizen. The Party will do your reading for you and tell you what to think.


19 posted on 10/04/2024 9:58:05 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

It doesn’t matter, citizen. The Party will do your reading for you and tell you what to think.


20 posted on 10/04/2024 9:58:05 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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