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 ...
Having a parent, older sibling, or friend who reads books is an important influence as well.
Why should nitwits get a pass?
bingo
I’m still left wondering which evolved first: the penis or the vagina
jls was nearly sixty years ago
I read it while traveling during honeymoon.
New Age bullcrap.
Have you gotten good enough with the Kindle that you can read an eBook as well as a physical one? I’ve tried using a Kindle (and other tables) for book reading but I’m put off because it feels slow and clumsy. Like I can’t jump around or quickly scan through things or hold a couple of places at once with my fingers and that kind of thing. So I wind up getting frustrated and just reading real books. But it may just be that I haven’t stuck with it long enough to get good at the interface.
I ran into something like that, only even worse, with the books of Montgomery M. Atwater. In the 40s and 50s Atwater wrote young-adult adventure stories set in Montana, and I loved them when I was a kid. Those stories were what caused me to spend years as a firefighter for the Forest Service (though of course it was not like the stories). I bought most of those books some years ago and I still enjoy them.
Well, a couple of years ago I thought a kid we know would enjoy Montgomery M. Atwater’s stories, so I bought one from Amazon, not noticing that it now had a second author (James Atwater) listed. The cover said something about “edited and revised for a modern readership” which didn’t sound good. I compared the rewritten book to the original version, and it became clear that it was all a scheme to get a new copyright on those books by changing them just enough. The differences weren’t a lot of modern wokeness and eco-crap so much as merely changing some phrasing around (not for the better) and leaving out a scene or two.
The whole thing struck me as an attempt by a relative of M. M. Atwater to make some easy money by looting MMA’s creativity. The “improved” versions are nearly all of what’s available on Amazon now, so the kid I know will have to do without.
Kindle has ways to navigate around and leave bookmarks, even to search, but still not as conveniently as paper books IMO.
There were lots of books in our house because my parents both loved to read, and they taught all six of us to read by 4 or 5 (using phonics, of course). There was no nonsense about a book being “too old” for a child, so all of us read whatever interested us, including some literature which today would be thought far too complicated for kids in the primary grades. I also read most of my older siblings’ assigned school reading. Did I understand all of what I read back then? Of course not. At first I’d read a particular book just for the plot and descriptions, but I’d get more out of that book when I reread it a few years later.
The early books were all 25 chapters long and written at a sixth grade level. In the sixties the books were rewritten to be 20 chapters long and at a fourth grade level and 90% of non WASP characters were removed.
This was to "remove racism", up date slang and make them easier for children raised in the age of television to read.
They ripped out the heart of some very good books and turned them a bit bland.
Now they were still head and shoulders over what they are publishing today but it was quite sad.
So when I can I try to find for our personal library the originals. The Tom Swift books are very good for showing how technology developed as it was happening rather then in retrospect.
Alibris.com is pretty good for early editions of books (don’t know about those particular ones), but can be a bit pricy.
I read everything I could get my hands from about 2nd grade on. To say I was fascinated by reading would be an understatement. School bored the heck out of me but no book was safe around me.
I hunt at garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales (also can be pricy) and whatever anyone brings into my shop.
Had someone a few years back bring in a complete set of "The Air Service Boys" which I snatched up. Had been boxed up in his attic for at least 60 years. I think they are on line now but they were not at the time.
Reading things written when historical events are happening gives you a very different perspective then the one you get reading things written after the fact.
Same here. I still remember reading the entire second-grade reader on the first day of school and thinking, “OK, what now?”
During grade school and high school I was always getting in trouble for reading a book under my desk during class. That backfired on the teacher during third grade when I got sent to (unsupervised) detention in the vacant lunchroom. I discovered a balcony where the school stored excess library books and textbooks, and after that detention wasn’t bad at all. Spent a lot of time in that lunchroom.
I took some philosophy courses in college back in the day.
I concluded the purpose of the courses was to make philosophy as dreary as possible and to convince us it was not worth our time.
Good luck reading Hegel and Wittgenstein and Heidegger and figuring out what they are talking about...
Many years later I listened to Terence McKenna’s long lectures on philosophy. They were entertaining and brilliant—even when I disagreed with some of his points.
Philosophy can be fascinating—if taught by a teacher with a passion for the subject.
I wish I had the books of my childhood. Over the years, I wouldn’t have been able to move them around or store them, though.
I did keep some, and I’ve bought more than a few in recent years, but there were so many others. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to reread everything I’d like to, let alone long enough to read new books.
Re some young people working at a restaurant in Oklahoma.
They know the street names for places and stores - thanks to their cell phone “education” (companion), but they do not know where the places are, no awareness on a compass, map . . . without looking at their electronic display “companion.”
They did not know the names of trees and birds that were just outside the windows of the restaurant.
In a major city, there is one library that has the history books. All of the other libraries including the remote counties, have had their history books removed “to the central depository.”
My boy was still in diapers, sitting in his car seat. I was driving by a mall in NC, and he said, “Daddy. Why would that woman rather be naked than wear fur?”
I almost ran off the road. Then I saw some PETA protestors, and one woman had a sign saying “I’d rather be naked than wear fur!”
I asked, “Did you read that sign?”
He replied, “I don’t know.”
So I pointed out signs on the way home, and he was able to read them all. When we got home I pulled out books and he was able to read them all. I even pulled out some of my college Zoology books. He wouldn’t try to pronounce any words he had never heard, but if he had heard words he could read them.
They called it spontaneous reading. I think he picked it up from Sesame Street.
He is in his 30’s and still loves reading.
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