Not being able to read a book by the time you get to college is a terrible accusation.
October 14, 2024 11am
When I was taking GCSEs, when they were still a novelty and my parents still called them O-levels, we read books in class. I mean the whole book. And play. Lord of the Flies. 1984. Macbeth. The importance of being serious. Stormy Blood Plateau, if you can believe it. It took forever to find out that our national literary canon was best served by being read out loud, hour after hour, week after week, lesson after lesson, to 35 disaffected teenagers who took turns stumbling over it. I can’t say.
Why did the teachers do this? Because they knew that few students had the temperament or home to read such books outside the classroom. And so did the classroom, if we were to all master the prescribed classics, no matter how painful.
At the time, we realized that it was an inefficient and probably unsustainable practice. However, I was impressed by his lack of giving up back then, and I am still impressed by him even now. The idea that we should all be able to read, understand, and appreciate these sophisticated texts, on as much of the same level of competition as possible, and not be left to our own devices, is It was wholesome and noble.
Like many sound and noble principles, it seems to have gone out the window since then. Assigned texts are now shorter (e.g. Of Mice and Men instead of The Grapes of Wrath, and students are often only required to master a larger volume of gobbets rather than the whole ). In a recent article in The Atlantic, students entering college say they can’t concentrate long enough to read a book because they’ve never been asked to do so before.
Of course, the internet and smartphones are the easiest and most obvious reason for shortening this attention span and making it impossible to derive pleasure from being deeply immersed in something, let alone a book. But over the years, especially during and since the pandemic, unprecedented changes have exacerbated and accelerated so many negative trends in young people’s lives that, over the years, we have expected very little from our children. I think there is also an overlooked fact that this is no longer the case.
After all, now parents should be friends with their children. And it’s hard to keep demanding of your friends. In particular, things like manners, thinking about others, sitting quietly, persevering in a task, or the concept of deferring gratification are not within a friend’s purview.
Modern parenting best practices tell children that despite their age difference, they should be seen as independent beings, which is clearly absurd. , it feels strange to ask you to behave or sit back and work on something you don’t do, especially if you don’t want to make your wish come true right away and do it long enough to get a return on your investment. yeah.
Plus, it’s hard, even if you get past the weird awkwardness. Parenting is hard, but it’s even harder when life gets busy, uncertainty and stress increase, bosses demand extra work hours and ready availability, and child care is scraped together on an ad hoc basis. is. Stable everywhere…
In other words, there is nothing in modern life that allows children to reach their full potential. There is hardly enough time to love them. Trying to lay the foundation for educational gains and better future prospects while at the same time tainting it is difficult, even when you know you should.
But it hurts to waste everything. The plasticity of children’s minds and their ability to absorb facts, ideas, theories, stories, and skills is amazing. But you catch them early, diligently and defiantly stuff everything you need into that tiny but immeasurably capacious brain-bread, sow the seeds thickly in the fertile ground, let them germinate, We must allow it to flourish as needed, preferably later in life.
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Because we calcify quickly, right? I think the last thing I effortlessly read and memorized was the opening chapter of Lolita (it’s only a few paragraphs and practically a poem) when I was 19 years old. Since then, it’s been a gradual journey to liberation (with many detours to find out) I have the keys and am about to prepare my tax return before submitting it to my accountant. Because right now I’m losing to the numbers).
Not being able to read a single book by the time you get to college is a damning indictment of current parenting, educational practices, and entire social conditions. It means that immense potential that could benefit us all is lost, and that enormous amounts of individual happiness are denied.
To say so is not to defend elitism, but to embody the noble principles that were practiced in small but profound ways in my state school classroom 35 years ago: to encourage young people to get more value and more out of life. You get more joy – and, not coincidentally, you also get more back. Without it, we quickly become an empty world, running without any means of refueling ourselves ever again.
