That reading centuries old works of literature won’t get you very far in this world.
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books
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For the most part, I found literary ‘’masterpieces” that you’re forced to read in school boring as phuck. It’s like being forced to watch all the movies that the film critics try to tell us are good. I thought I hated reading growing up. Turns out I hated the shit material.
The great thing about America is one can be successful while being an idiot or well read and educated, one just has to decide how they want to go through life.
“He never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants.
It warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Joe Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.”
So in your estimation, a self made wealthy businessman who chooses not to read old world works of literature is an idiot while the unambitious guy driving Ubers and reading Tolstoy is well read and educated? Got it.
Great you've given 1 example out of 4 million teachers that teach 500 lessons or more a year.Funny you should mention that....
Arlington Public Schools English Teacher Agitates in District and Classroom about Gaza War; Assigns Biased Projects to Students; Accuses Israel of Settler-Colonialism and Genocide; Notes She Donates to Hamas-linked Charity - Parents Defending Educati
Emails obtained via public records request highlight Arlington Public Schools high school English teacher Shayma Al-Hanooti inserting the Israel-Palestine conflict into many aspects of classroom teaching, as well as attempting to influence fellow teachers and the administration. She is still...defendinged.org
Good work...
that's funny, i didn't think i suggested it was the norm. but it does illustrate the point about bad teaching. But, a body of evidence does indeed begin with "one".
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That sort of teacher isn't terribly rare at the University level. Let's keep them out of k-12
Exactly. I don't remember exactly what grade I had to read old Finn, but I remember thinking it was gibberish half the time and my English teacher that blew her top over a misplaced comma must hate this guy.
For most kids, the "classics" suck at getting you engaged to be a reader. And this was before phones, tiktok, etc.
Yeah man. Few eighth graders can appreciate the beauty of that passage. It wasn’t until my early thirties that I read Huckleberry Finn and understood it.
I think it was maybe 5th or 6th grade I read it. It was definitely elementary. In the first paragraph alone I probably wouldn't have been sure what a turnip-cart was, had no idea what a lath was, what a "mouthful of ashes" meant, zero clue what an ambuscade was, and calling someone an A-rabs is probably something my mom would have washed my mouth out with soap for....nevermind all the made up words.
Feeding a kid that's 10-12 years old passages where they can't just read it with a nice flow because they don't understand words, meaning, context, etc. and they get hung up on the minutia vs. the story is not the way to get them interested in reading. That's not to say that it doesn't do other good things that helps someone learn (frankly at any age). But the topic of this thread is kids not liking to read books. Forcing shit on kids that you appreciate later in life when you've gathered those skills just because it's a "classic" does not accomplish the goal of creating more avid readers IMHO.
Teenagers are boring people.
Great fiction resonates because of shared experience. Most teenagers don’t have any. How can you expect them to truly understand Faulkner or Steinbeck?
I can’t imagine reading Updike, Ford, or Russo as a teen. I didn’t fully get American Pastoral until I had kids.
I think my hatred of reading started in college when the Prof. required reading list was two books written by himself. He reminded us they were for sale at the campus bookstore and Iowa Book.
We need more teachers like your wife. Reading is fundamental to success in life, and I don't trust people who don't read.
Reading books just isn't for everyone. I read a little but if the material doesn't interest me there's no way I'm continuing on with the book. Even if it was assigned in school. I have a co-worker that is an operations manager and does a great job, has a degree from Coe, and proudly states he's never read a book in his life and he's 45. I also have a granddaughter that's 9, reads a new book every week and not kids books. Adult books, and she loves it. Pretty sure this isn't a new thing.
I agree with you. I love reading, and I read often. But when it comes to books we needed to read at, then it's something different. I didn't like them at all, and it was so hard to start reading.
In university it's better, but still. And students have a lot of other tasks, and I can't imagine who wants to read a huge book after doing a lot of tasks from other disciplines
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FWIW, as I was intrigued by this article, I actually asked my neighbor, who is an English professor at W&L and has something of a reputation of taking things seriously, whether it rang true in his experience. He said only about 10-20% in that yes, students do whine a bit, but that he routinely teaches weighty tomes and has a substantial course syllabus of full books.
I agree 100%. My graduate school was on the quarter system and this made time management much easier ... much much easier! I was expecting there to be a slow transition over time to the Quarter System, but it has been 45 years and not one school has seen the light.
The Good Earth. It has to be the most boring 'classic' ever.
I had summer reading assignments in middle school and for a couple of high school classes.
Off the top of my head - Grapes of Wrath, Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Animal Farm, 1984, Robinson Crusoe.
Just the idea that some people believe reading has no value is depressing - though even before social media I'm sure there were countless with this opinion.
i don’t know the importance of this test but why are only americans broken down by race? why no british asians or french blacks or chinese uigurs?
Because that’s what the analyst did, presumably to show that “our” whites, Asians, Hispanics, and blacks did pretty ok relative to their racial peers worldwide. Seriously though, us analysts substratify for analytical purposes
The test is a big deal.
