A recent article in the Atlantic magazine set off alarm bells in various corners of the internet. The article, entitled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” made note of the fact that large majorities of students at what used to be thought of as America’s most prestigious colleges – Columbia and Berkeley are mentioned specifically – are no longer capable of reading entire books. The article was met with a great deal of hand-wringing and outrage, while those of us who have labored in America’s literature classrooms for years were left wondering what took everyone so long to figure out this was the situation.
Amen. It's all downstream of the culture. I am a 40-something homeschooling mother that went to Duke University in the 90s, and so I have 1) given up much in the way of personal glory and remuneration, and 2) done so precisely because I recognize that the only way to give my children what I wanted for them--long hours to read, a love of books, a life of the mind, a home conversation centered around books and ideas--was to remove them from the mainstream culture. I'm proud to say that a year ago, when my eldest son, who was then 13, heard someone say TikTok, he assumed they had misspoken and meant the breath mints, Tic Tacs. Ha! He is reading Ivanhoe now, and really enjoys Roman and Greek history, so much so that he's designing a board game based on The Iliad. My 11 year old daughter is obsessed with Jane Austen, and my youngest son, who is 8 and loves playing golf, is able to enjoy and largely understand Wodehouse's golf stories, which I read aloud at bedtime to all three of my children. All three love books, as do I. It's possible, but one must be laser-focused and intentional--it's no accident when it happens.
I ought to add, since from this comment it may sound as if they have no social life, that they have many friends! They attend a nature school weekly and we have a homeschool community we see every week as well, not to mention friends from church. One can have an intellectual, academic life and a community life as well.
Even as someone who has taught chiefly at classical schools, your description of catching heat from admins for enforcing reasonable academic standards really resonates. For the first four or five years of my career I felt I was locked in a constant battle with my school administrations about assigning real work and giving an honest assessment about work done. I say with shame that I didn't always stand my ground, but as years went by and I grew more confident in my ability to assess fairly I got more and more ready to go to the mat and face off with parents, admins, even board members when they applied pressure -- always with a smile and a friendly face, but backed up by a quiet tenacity. Once I got to about year eight or nine, people began to give me a wider berth and assume I knew what I was doing. I say all this to encourage young teachers: the fight is long and hard but it's worth it, and as the years go by it gets easier to hold the line.
Just as you say, the system is designed to give us the results we are getting. I have written in the past how the pervasive conflict I have seen at schools is between their long- and short-term goals. In the short-term, it feels good to pacify parents, pass graduates along, and keep the institution humming. In the long-term, however, an institution with flabby academic standards will find it ultimately has no reason for being. Judging by The Atlantic article, people are beginning to catch on to this.
That's a good way of putting it, Ian, and resonates with things I have observed over the years. I have spent my entire career in private school, and the appeal of private school has always been higher academic standards and tighter discipline. When those things disappear, families no longer have the motive to spend the extra money on tuition. And yet, I routinely watched administrators compromise on those things, for the sake of avoiding present conflict. They never saw the damage they were doing to the school long term.
I think the habit of pointing the finger at the phantom “they” is universal and international, a comfortable and easily digestible way to absolve yourself of responsibility and consequently need for action. For those of us with school aged children, I don’t think there’s time to contemplate and talk, as it’s such an emergency, you have to save your child and find ways to pass on the best of what humanity has to offer while the time window is still open.
I agree with Through Paper Doors that is a sacrifice on the part of the parent(s) and a lot of daily hard work, including emotional work.
Even though I am coming from a slightly different background, your article resonated with me greatly. teach at a Western university in Vietnam. My job is to prepare students for their degree courses. Students by and large have absolutely no interest in learning and are merely in it for the certificate. It feels like a cargo cult version of education. This is a society that doesn’t take learning seriously, but at the same time is completely in thrall to its trappings. Vietnamese press regularly boasts of some student winning a maths olympiad (whatever that is) but it is a country incapable of building a metro system in its capital city. So the rot is everywhere, and yes it has a lot to do with technology and the endless quest for convenience and comfort.
Very interesting. I tutor a fair number of students from overseas, and this jives with what I see. The emphasis is always just on passing the exam du jour, actual learning be damned.
"What happens, for instance, when she assigns a failing grade to a student who does not do the reading? Quite often, what happens is that the parent of that student calls up the administration and starts raising hell. Even if the administrator is supportive of the teacher – which is definitely not always the case – the stress of having to march into the boss’ office to justify your grading practices is enough to make any young teacher question whether their commitment to academic rigor was really worth it. Multiply such episodes a few times in a young teacher’s career, and he or she will quickly realize that job security in a modern school is much better preserved by 'going with the flow.' Multiply such episodes through school after school and then you have part of your answer as to why instructional standards have continued to drop within our 'system.'"
Exactly right. I take no pride in saying that my standards have fallen sharply since I started teaching (5 years ago!) but you described the exact staircase I've trundled down. There is way, way more discipline put upon teachers than students, and unless you're willing to be prickly, disliked, and highly fire-able, our administrative system will break most teachers down.
Teachers could find creative ways around our ADD culture by introducing students to works by Catullus and Webern. Too many people equate "intellectually rigorous" with "long and boring". These artists could serve as gateway drugs by showing that great thought need not be tedious.
Yes, this is true. I have pitched poetry to teachers (who are often reluctant to teach it) as a way of drawing students in with shorter assignments. But poetry obviously has its own special challenges, and the complexities of the language can be every bit as daunting to many students as the length of a Dostoyevsky novel.
Amen. It's all downstream of the culture. I am a 40-something homeschooling mother that went to Duke University in the 90s, and so I have 1) given up much in the way of personal glory and remuneration, and 2) done so precisely because I recognize that the only way to give my children what I wanted for them--long hours to read, a love of books, a life of the mind, a home conversation centered around books and ideas--was to remove them from the mainstream culture. I'm proud to say that a year ago, when my eldest son, who was then 13, heard someone say TikTok, he assumed they had misspoken and meant the breath mints, Tic Tacs. Ha! He is reading Ivanhoe now, and really enjoys Roman and Greek history, so much so that he's designing a board game based on The Iliad. My 11 year old daughter is obsessed with Jane Austen, and my youngest son, who is 8 and loves playing golf, is able to enjoy and largely understand Wodehouse's golf stories, which I read aloud at bedtime to all three of my children. All three love books, as do I. It's possible, but one must be laser-focused and intentional--it's no accident when it happens.
An Iliad board game! That sounds awesome! I need a copy of that when it comes out.
I ought to add, since from this comment it may sound as if they have no social life, that they have many friends! They attend a nature school weekly and we have a homeschool community we see every week as well, not to mention friends from church. One can have an intellectual, academic life and a community life as well.
Even as someone who has taught chiefly at classical schools, your description of catching heat from admins for enforcing reasonable academic standards really resonates. For the first four or five years of my career I felt I was locked in a constant battle with my school administrations about assigning real work and giving an honest assessment about work done. I say with shame that I didn't always stand my ground, but as years went by and I grew more confident in my ability to assess fairly I got more and more ready to go to the mat and face off with parents, admins, even board members when they applied pressure -- always with a smile and a friendly face, but backed up by a quiet tenacity. Once I got to about year eight or nine, people began to give me a wider berth and assume I knew what I was doing. I say all this to encourage young teachers: the fight is long and hard but it's worth it, and as the years go by it gets easier to hold the line.
Just as you say, the system is designed to give us the results we are getting. I have written in the past how the pervasive conflict I have seen at schools is between their long- and short-term goals. In the short-term, it feels good to pacify parents, pass graduates along, and keep the institution humming. In the long-term, however, an institution with flabby academic standards will find it ultimately has no reason for being. Judging by The Atlantic article, people are beginning to catch on to this.
That's a good way of putting it, Ian, and resonates with things I have observed over the years. I have spent my entire career in private school, and the appeal of private school has always been higher academic standards and tighter discipline. When those things disappear, families no longer have the motive to spend the extra money on tuition. And yet, I routinely watched administrators compromise on those things, for the sake of avoiding present conflict. They never saw the damage they were doing to the school long term.
I think the habit of pointing the finger at the phantom “they” is universal and international, a comfortable and easily digestible way to absolve yourself of responsibility and consequently need for action. For those of us with school aged children, I don’t think there’s time to contemplate and talk, as it’s such an emergency, you have to save your child and find ways to pass on the best of what humanity has to offer while the time window is still open.
I agree with Through Paper Doors that is a sacrifice on the part of the parent(s) and a lot of daily hard work, including emotional work.
Even though I am coming from a slightly different background, your article resonated with me greatly. teach at a Western university in Vietnam. My job is to prepare students for their degree courses. Students by and large have absolutely no interest in learning and are merely in it for the certificate. It feels like a cargo cult version of education. This is a society that doesn’t take learning seriously, but at the same time is completely in thrall to its trappings. Vietnamese press regularly boasts of some student winning a maths olympiad (whatever that is) but it is a country incapable of building a metro system in its capital city. So the rot is everywhere, and yes it has a lot to do with technology and the endless quest for convenience and comfort.
Very interesting. I tutor a fair number of students from overseas, and this jives with what I see. The emphasis is always just on passing the exam du jour, actual learning be damned.
"What happens, for instance, when she assigns a failing grade to a student who does not do the reading? Quite often, what happens is that the parent of that student calls up the administration and starts raising hell. Even if the administrator is supportive of the teacher – which is definitely not always the case – the stress of having to march into the boss’ office to justify your grading practices is enough to make any young teacher question whether their commitment to academic rigor was really worth it. Multiply such episodes a few times in a young teacher’s career, and he or she will quickly realize that job security in a modern school is much better preserved by 'going with the flow.' Multiply such episodes through school after school and then you have part of your answer as to why instructional standards have continued to drop within our 'system.'"
Exactly right. I take no pride in saying that my standards have fallen sharply since I started teaching (5 years ago!) but you described the exact staircase I've trundled down. There is way, way more discipline put upon teachers than students, and unless you're willing to be prickly, disliked, and highly fire-able, our administrative system will break most teachers down.
Stan, all of us who have been in education for more than a year or two have found ourselves a few steps lower on that staircase than we started out.
Teachers could find creative ways around our ADD culture by introducing students to works by Catullus and Webern. Too many people equate "intellectually rigorous" with "long and boring". These artists could serve as gateway drugs by showing that great thought need not be tedious.
Yes, this is true. I have pitched poetry to teachers (who are often reluctant to teach it) as a way of drawing students in with shorter assignments. But poetry obviously has its own special challenges, and the complexities of the language can be every bit as daunting to many students as the length of a Dostoyevsky novel.
Excellent