Seems like the schools (not the colleges) that aren't preparing these kids. They mentioned some students saying they haven't had to read a full book prior to college. That's not good. Not everything can be learned through short-form media. And it's such a disserve to the kids. Reading can be such a joy.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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I teach philosophy at a community college.
I have learned from my students that their high schools didn’t ever require them to read a whole book or write much of anything. They also didn’t teach them some essential computer skills.
Strangest of all, it is apparently a common practice to award a base grade of 50% on all assignments, even for missing work.
So, my introductory philosophy class, which I have designed to be very easy (you likely get an A for showing up, talking, and turning things in on time) ends up being more difficult than anything they’ve ever done in school so far because I’m asking them to read 10 or so pages a week and write around 500 words a week.
That's so wild. Some of these kids want to go on to be doctors, lawyers, etc., but they won't be able to read the needed text. That's so unfair to them.
Why would you study anything with literature if you had never read a book before? This sound like a colossal waste of time and money. My theory is that if you were good at anything or had an interest in a particular topic, you would study something else like engineering, medicine, or law (I exclude the case that you may be genuinely interested in literature). Thus, many of those who study literature have no idea what they should study else and probably think that they can always get through a course which is about book. Why? Probably rich family pressured them into studying instead of posting stuff on Instagram or TikTok.
The article is about a course that's required for all freshmen, not just lit majors. Here's the first sentence of the article:
Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998.
It still applies. If you cannot X, but X is required, don't do it.
If you cannot read books, higher education is probably not your thing.
I didn't say their point wasn't valid, I just thought their reading comprehension was ironic.
I can corroborate that it gets crazy even in courses expecting high literacy. I had the painful experience of teaching a 3rd year course in communication studies that was part of the media production stream. It required writing preproduction documentation and a script. There were a lot of questionable attempts but there's always a range of interest and skill, right? One student, and let me remind you this is third year at a university, I called into office hours. I'm a fan of poetry, so I just had to be sure that she wasn't cleverly lampooning Gertrude Stein in some ironic way. Sadly, no, she just had no fucking clue how to write ANYTHING coherent. Amazing.
Apparently in many highschools and middle schools, literature classes will only make students study an excerpt or article on the subject, not the entire book. When they get to college and their professors drop a book on them, it's unexpected, because they thought it would be more articles and excerpts.
I went to college, can't read books, brain won't let me. I read short form only. College was difficult.
I'm curious what the downvote was for.
I didn't downvote but personally I'm not sure what's dystopian about fewer people reading long, dense books and choosing to consume other, shorter media instead. It's like saying less people watching opera is dystopian. What's the problem with a medium becoming unpopular?
I am a professor. I'm fine with choosing to consume shorter media - I read very few novels any more either. I think the point that the students appear unable to read long form. It actually matches up with my own experience where incoming students have never had to write long form either.
"Can I text you the assignment?"
I think the worry is that, sometimes problems or concepts are too complex to be distilled into a short form. If someone only ever gets the short version of everything, they can lose a tremendous amount of nuance, and the desire for the shortest version may lead people to come away with a misinformed or caricaturized version.
We're already seeing how dangerous that is with how everything has to be a quick soundbyte or people lose interest due to a short attention span, to the point where they ONLY know the soundbyte but feel well informed, when they are in fact still ignorant. This can lead to people being easily manipulated, or coming to harmful conclusions that don't account for enough complexity or variables.
If tiktok and twitter train your mind to have a short attention span, reading long form books trains your mind to be able to hold large concepts in your head all at once, and how they relate to one another. In other words, it is training you to be able to form 'big picture' conceptions about things.
This video on the subject does a good job of delving into the issue.
Do you have a short version of the video you linked?
(/s)
I suspect it's the loss of attention span, in this case.
Sorry I zoned out did you s