Think of students who made it into the Ivy League — can you believe some of them made it there without ever actually finishing reading a book. Rose Horowitch, assistant editor at The Atlantic, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why top students are complaining about having to read books for college classes, how testing culture has contributed to this problem, and what this means for developing critical thinking skills. Her article is “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.”
The best college students don’t want to read
By Madelyn Walton, Think Intern
For most elite college students, reading the classics has become their last priority and many are realizing they just don’t have the skill set to do it. From heavy courseloads to lack of experience, students are starting to shut down when it comes to assigned reading.
Rose Horowitch is an assistant editor at The Atlantic. She joined Krys Boyd to talk about college students’ reluctance to read, why educational institutions are straying away from assigned reading, and waning student focus. Her article is “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read.”
Horowitch interviewed several professors from esteemed American universities and they explained that students do not have enough experience with long-form works and struggle to keep up with the assigned reading.
She profiled one professor, Nicholas Dames from Columbia University, who was especially interested in the change of students’ ability to process these works of literature.
“Twenty years ago, Dames’s classes had no problem engaging in sophisticated discussions of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ one week and ‘Crime and Punishment’ the next. Now his students tell him up front that the reading load feels impossible,” says Horowitch. “It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.”
College-level reading is more advanced than middle and high school courses, and essentially requires more time, thought, and analysis. Horowitch notes that high school teachers have also begun to turn to other mediums like Ted Talks and podcasts to educate their students. Teachers are more focused on preparing their students for the workforce than teaching the classics.
“I think there there’s been more of an emphasis on media literacy and teaching students to kind of interact with all these other forms that they will be encountering in their life,” she says.
A few professors told Horowitch that the problem may not be the content of the book, but the ability to finish the complete work.
“It’s much more attention and really being able to attend to something, either a long work or even a short one, for an extended period of time,” she says. “And really being able to bring those analytical powers to a work and not get sidetracked or struggle to keep focus.”
Another problem that won’t surprise anybody: smartphones.
“Teenagers are constantly tempted by their devices, which inhibits their preparation for the rigors of college coursework—then they get to college, and the distractions keep flowing,” she says.
Professors continue to navigate how to keep students engaged by diversifying the reading list: adding new authors, implementing modern literature, and recognizing diverse ethnic backgrounds. However, these solutions may not be enough.
“Some experts I spoke with attributed the decline of book reading to a shift in values rather than in skill sets,” she says. “Students can still read books, they argue—they’re just choosing not to.”
- +
Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] One of the rites of passage of middle and high school used to be reading books assigned by a teacher. I remember being pleasantly surprised by some of those compulsory reads and absolutely hating some others. Sorry. John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath really is a brilliant book, but 15 year old me was not quite in that headspace. But in recent years, reading lists at a lot of schools have been cold to the point that it’s possible to earn a high school diploma without ever having made your way through a single full length novel, let alone a handful, each semester. Which means there are students attending some of the very best universities in this country who are not prepared to take on what used to be considered college level reading. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. To be clear, this is not a case of students who lack basic literacy skills and might need some remedial help to catch up to their peers. These are the students whose grades and test scores earned them admission to highly coveted schools, only to report to their professors that they can’t possibly slog through an entire narrative as required by the class. Educators were stunned as they encountered the first students to object to this amount of reading. But now, as my guest has learned, some of them are responding by asking less of students. Rose Horowitch is assistant editor at The Atlantic, which published her article, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” Rose, welcome to Think.
Rose Horowitch [00:01:23] Krys, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk about the article.
Krys Boyd [00:01:27] You opened the article by introducing us to Nicholas Dames, who’s been teaching a course required of all Columbia University students for more than 25 years. It’s called Literature Humanities, which is what kind of a fancy way of saying survey of great books.
Rose Horowitch [00:01:43] Yes. So he’s been teaching it on and off since 1998.
Krys Boyd [00:01:48] But for the last ten years or so, he has found growing numbers of his students gobsmacked by the reading list. This is something beyond just welcome to the rigors of an Ivy League education. I take it.
Rose Horowitch [00:02:00] Yes. So something that was really interesting about talking to Nick Dames was that he’s a historian of the novel. And so, you know, he knows that people are always worried about young people’s reading and, you know, whether young people are reading enough. And yet he still is, you know, very concerned by what he’s seeing, you know, in his students, particularly just in the last ten years. You know, he says that, you know, they tell him up front that the reading list just feels impossible to manage or confront. And they really struggle to kind of attend to small details in the book. You know, in a book, while also, you know, paying attention to the larger narrative. And he even had one student who came to his office hours and told him that, you know, the challenge that she was finding with the course was that in high school, she had never been asked to read a full book. And so she just wasn’t used to the thought of, you know, we’re going to be reading one book this week and then another book the next week. That was just something she’d never encountered.
Krys Boyd [00:03:03] So it’s remarkable. She did well enough on all the required high school courses and standardized tests to get into Columbia, but those requirements did not include full length works of fiction.
Rose Horowitch [00:03:15] Yes. And that was something that I really wanted to address in my article, is that, you know, the changes that we’re not really asking students to, you know, be reading as many books in middle and high schools, you know, as we used to. So it is possible to do quite well on the tests, but, you know, to still not be prepared for, you know, college level reading just because it isn’t something that, you know, we’re requiring of students.
Krys Boyd [00:03:43] I want to bring up something that you acknowledged toward the top of the piece, which is that there have always been students who didn’t quite get through the assigned reading for every single class. What was it that convinced Professor Dames that the current situation is indeed something new?
Rose Horowitch [00:03:58] I think it was the volume of students, you know, that were saying this and, you know, sort of the change that he noticed, you know, just among so many of his students. I think that was the difference. You know, among the professors that I spoke with is that, you know, almost all of them said that, you know, they they can’t think of a single person who would say that this isn’t happening and that that is kind of what convinces them, you know, even though there have long been, you know, complaints about young people’s reading.
Krys Boyd [00:04:32] This particular student he told you about had attended a public high school. But of course, there are thousands of public high schools in the United States. Is there any reason to think her experience of never having been required to read a book for class cover to cover is somehow unusual?
Rose Horowitch [00:04:48] So that was something that I was trying to figure out. I mean, I confirmed with Professor Dames that, you know, she attended just a standard public high school and it wasn’t, you know, a special school in any way. But, you know, it’s difficult because we don’t track, you know, the exact curricula at public high schools across the country. So it’s difficult to know, you know, what teachers are assigning. So I spoke with, you know, a lot of public high school teachers as well as, you know, leaders of the largest English teachers union and, you know, just experts in middle and high school education, you know, and they were really saying that there is this trend, you know, maybe it’s not widespread to be reading zero books, but certainly, you know, pretty much everyone that they’ve seen is cutting books from their syllabus. So, you know, they might still be reading a few, but far fewer than they used to.
Krys Boyd [00:05:45] Some parents really sacrifice to pay for private schools, hoping their children are getting a better quality education than their public school peers. Are things reliably different there?
Rose Horowitch [00:05:56] So that was also I mean, it’s challenging because there aren’t good studies of this. But, you know, when I spoke with college professors, they were saying that, you know, it does seem that there is some gap and that the students that, you know, come from in a more elite private schools generally, you know, are better prepared just in the sense of having been asked to read more books. But at the same time, you know, they also anecdotally seem to be making this change. You know, I wrote a little bit about my experience. I graduated from, you know, a private school five years ago. And I, you know, took a Jane Austen class and was only asked to read one Jane Austen book in my senior year. So, you know, it certainly doesn’t seem that that that they’re, you know, assigning what we would think they would be assigning or might have thought, you know, even 20 years ago.
Krys Boyd [00:06:49] So you five years out of high school are writing for the Atlantic. Obviously you were a very good student. But I wonder, did you struggle at all when you got to college because the reading load was heavier?
Rose Horowitch [00:07:01] It was really hard. Yes, I definitely did have to to kind of adjust just to to the pace and the rhythm of reading so much and figuring out, you know, what you do need to attend to and you know, how to to kind of, you know, synthesize a book so quickly. And and I think that’s, you know, normal and something that that all students kind of feel. But the professors that I was speaking to, you know, were saying that they’re really just seeing it. It’s so much more, you know, is starting to seem much more insurmountable to the point where, you know, they have to to trim their syllabi or, you know, kind of go back and teach students, you know, the skill of kind of how to read in a way or how they expect them to read in a way that they just would never have had to, you know, a decade ago.
Krys Boyd [00:07:54] You talked to dozens of educators as you were working on this piece. And it really doesn’t sound like they were all just panicking. They told you it’s not all students who seem unprepared to engage with lengthy works when they arrive at college, but it is noticeably more and more of them every year.
Rose Horowitch [00:08:12] Yes. So the professors were saying that, you know, for some of their best students, you know, who just love to read there, you know, it really is a small minority who, you know, are kind of the same as they’ve always been, but that it is more and more students are arriving, you know, just with a very different preparation than they used to be. It seemed, you know, they were saying that it sort of seemed to start about a decade ago and then it really intensified with the pandemic, which obviously made it much harder for middle and high school teachers to be teaching books. So they were saying that it has just kind of sped up more and more each year.
Krys Boyd [00:08:51] And again, I want to stress, we are not talking about students who have great potential, but maybe need some remedial help with basic skills because their high schools weren’t up to par. The ones who are writing about here, by definition, are some of the most qualified students around. These are the ones who make it to the reach schools.
Rose Horowitch [00:09:11] Yes. I’m so glad you brought that up, because that is a really important distinction, is that it’s not literacy in the way we we traditionally think of it. You know, students are still able to to, you know, decode words and, you know, understand sentences. It’s much more, you know, kind of attention and really being able to attend to something either a long work or even a short one for an extended period of time. And really being able to bring those analytical powers to a work and not sort of, you know, get sidetracked or kind of struggled to keep focus.
Krys Boyd [00:09:49] But these may be the very same students who skated close to burnout to rise to the top of their class rankings in high school. They were probably regularly up until all hours finishing assignments. But those assignments maybe didn’t include a whole lot of books.
Rose Horowitch [00:10:06] Yes. So that was something that came up a lot as I was speaking with with high school educators or people who who study that area. And they were talking about how, you know, these educational initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Common Core, you know, really emphasize kind of discrete skills, you know, being able to pick out the main idea of a passage and, you know, other things that are very easily testable. And they really emphasize, you know, standardized tests and specific discrete standards. And then that kind of led it to, you know, student to teachers kind of focusing, you know, of teaching to the test, you know, much more exclusively. And, you know, the aim of these educational initiatives was, you know, not to make it, you know, students less likely to read books, of course, but they were saying in practice, you know, because you can’t test somebody on reading Tolstoy, that it does kind of lead to students having more trouble with long form reading because they’re just not asked to do it. And they can do perfectly well in school without having to do it.
Krys Boyd [00:11:13] I see. So you can’t you can’t give students a full week where they’re locked into a test prep room so they can read War and Peace and then the following Monday, give them the assignment. Give them the exam.
Rose Horowitch [00:11:24] Yeah, it’s like the passages on, you know, standardized tests are going to have passages and you’re going to have to, you know, answer a few questions. Picking out the main idea, you know, you know, answering what you know about a metaphor in it or something. And so teachers are more training students for that, you know, because it’s just not possible to to test someone on reading a full book in these very high stakes tests.
Krys Boyd [00:11:48] Yeah, it’s an interesting challenge because presumably in the past, giving students a complex passage to analyze in one of these testing situations could have been understood to be kind of a stand in for how well they might engage with a longer work. But it seems to be turning out that’s not the case.
Rose Horowitch [00:12:06] Well, I do think it’s true that, you know, students who read more tend to do better on the tests. And so it’s not clear, you know, whether this is kind of the best way to prepare students for a test or whether, you know, if you if you try to get students to read, you know, just a lot of books, then they will do better. But, you know, teachers also brought up that they’re just contending with a lot of other challenges that, you know, absences have gone up, you know, particularly since the pandemic. You know, they’re they’re worried about book banning. And so it is challenging for them to, you know, assign a novel and trust that they’re going to have their students in class and be able to, you know, talk about it each day. And so it just a lot of trends are kind of leading them towards teaching fewer full books.
Krys Boyd [00:12:58] And of course, it’s not just teachers whose futures are tied to the rather, not just students whose futures are tied to these exams. I mean, teachers careers might rise or fall based on how well their students do. So there is an additional incentive to teach to those test.
Rose Horowitch [00:13:14] Yes. And that was something that, you know, some of the experts that I spoke with brought up that, you know, it’s really more of an institutional change. You know, regardless of how much individual teachers, you know, might love a book and want to teach it, you know, they might be under pressure from district or school leaders because, you know, schools and teachers kind of their their standing does depend on how their students perform on tests.
Krys Boyd [00:13:43] Rose Could any of the pull back on so-called classic assigned novels have to do with 21st century realization that what’s in the canon is pretty limited? Like older generations were exposed almost exclusively to works by people of European descent to men in particular.
Rose Horowitch [00:14:01] I think that’s definitely a factor. And that was something that, you know, as I was speaking with professors who taught that literature, humanities course that we were discussing, that they brought up, that, you know, they were, you know, adding different books to their syllabus to try to have, you know, authors from, you know, more recent times or more, you know, racial or ethnically diverse backgrounds. So I think that that definitely, you know, is a is a factor in reading lists changing.
Krys Boyd [00:14:32] All right. Let’s double down here. It is not only that very bright students sometimes seem unprepared to add a lot of books to their homework load in college. One Georgetown English professor said some students can’t even make themselves struggle through a sonnet, which I think by definition means 14 lines of text.
Rose Horowitch [00:14:53] Yes. So that was something that was really interesting to me, was that, you know, we’re seeing it not only, you know, affect students, not only sort of being affected in in reading long works, but also and really being able to analyze and sit with short ones that, you know, this professor at Georgetown was saying that he notices a change, you know, even when his students are trying to, you know, just really study a sonnet. And I think that, you know, is a particularly important shift because, you know, it’s possible that, you know, maybe some of the books that were hundreds of pages, you know, and written hundreds of years ago might have seemed, you know, less relevant to students today. But also, you know, it is something to be, you know, very cognizant of if this is also, you know, showing up when students are reading, you know, and really trying to study, you know, even a short work.
Krys Boyd [00:15:49] It is ironic that a couple of centuries ago there was a moral panic about young people wasting their time reading novels. And I wonder if 200 years from now people will be worrying that students aren’t reading enough text messages or whatever the, you know, whatever the thing is.
Rose Horowitch [00:16:07] That. Yes, that was something that, you know, I was trying to always have in the back of my mind as I was writing this story is that, you know, this you know, it really does come in waves. You know, you can look back at almost any period in history and, you know, people are worried about the way that young people are engaging with some medium. And so, you know, one thing that that a lot of people brought up was that, you know, Plato had written Socrates worried that the advent of writing would lead to people, you know, then sort of struggling to remember things. And a lot of people brought that up as kind of an example that, you know, maybe we, you know, we’re just kind of always having a moral panic about how our how young people are engaging with the new technology. But I kind of interpreted it differently. I thought it sort of meant that, you know, we do kind of just do we do see real changes in how people engage with, you know, different forms of sexuality because, you know, I don’t know anybody today who could memorize the Iliad. Right. Right. You know, and so it’s like we do, you know, our memories are probably worse because we’re just not as practiced at using them. And so we just, you know, then have to kind of contend with the new, you know, advantages or disadvantages of that.
Krys Boyd [00:17:33] Let’s set school aside for a minute and think about whatever unstructured time students might have to read, you know, Game of Thrones or 50 Shades of Gray or whatever is popular. What did you learn about reading for pleasure among American high school students?
Rose Horowitch [00:17:50] So I learned that it is decreasing. One statistic that I found very interesting and troubling. I found that, you know, in 1975, 40% or a little over 40% of high school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the past year. And I think just a few years ago, it was 10% about who had read at least six books for fun. And 40% of high school seniors had said they hadn’t read any books for fun in the last year. So we definitely are seeing, you know, a decrease in the amount that high school students are reading for pleasure, but also seeing a decline in how much people of all ages are reading for pleasure because, you know, older people who generally read more than young people are also reading, you know, at much lower levels.
Krys Boyd [00:18:40] Maybe this is about time, right? Like to get into a top school. Now, I think most students cannot just have excellent grades. They have to do like eight extracurricular activities and start a nonprofit. I mean, do they do students report? They just don’t have time to get through the reading.
Rose Horowitch [00:18:58] That was definitely something that came up in my reporting. You know, awesome professors and literacy experts were saying like, this is not a skill issue. This is one of values. And that, you know, what we’re telling students to do is, you know, focus on their extracurriculars, get an internship, you know, just focus on courses that, you know, are going to lead them to more lucrative careers than English or history might. And so, you know, that is definitely one theory that this is what’s going on, is that just you know, this is not something that, you know, people value and therefore, you know, they don’t have time for it.
Krys Boyd [00:19:37] I see. So the purpose of a college education in the 21st Century is seem to be preparing someone to engage in the workforce.
Rose Horowitch [00:19:46] I think that that is is something that, you know, a lot of the professors that I would I was speaking with were worried about that. You know, their students just kind of saw time spent reading is sort of like time they were wasting because, you know, they were really, really focused on, you know, starting an app or, you know, working on a play. And so they just, you know, felt that where they needed to spend their time was outside of the classroom.
Krys Boyd [00:20:14] Working on a play is interesting. I mean, maybe as an actor, but I’m thinking about people who might want to write plays. Could these trends of young people generally reading far less have an effect on what rising generations of writers might produce?
Rose Horowitch [00:20:30] That was something that some of the professors that I spoke with, you know, were really worried about was just, you know, reading. You know, the more you read, often that leads to people, you know, being more engaging writers. And so they were worried about the quality of writing that students might produce. And also just, you know, whether if someone wrote whether they would kind of find the audience, you know, for for their book or their play, you know, because because people might struggle to get through a longer work and, you know, just not want to read it. So it definitely that was something that that they were concerned about.
Krys Boyd [00:21:06] What about you as a writer? Do you feel like your history of deep reading is part of the toolkit you draw on when you’re writing something yourself?
Rose Horowitch [00:21:16] I definitely think so. I think that I mean, I think that reading is the best way to improve writing. But I mean, candidly, I, you know, even find it harder to read books, I think, than I used to. You know, I find that I have much more distractions and I, you know, pick up my phone or something. So and that was something that a lot of the professors I spoke with, you know, said was happening to them, too. So I don’t think it’s just like students, you know, I think it’s affecting a lot of people.
Krys Boyd [00:21:49] It’s worth asking here why college professors and many other people think it’s important for an education to include engagement with full length works. What can it do? What can a book do for our thinking that a complex passage or an excerpt cannot?
Rose Horowitch [00:22:07] So I spoke with Marianne Wolfe, and she’s a neuroscientist who, you know, has studies deep reading. And she was talking about how it really stimulates a number of important mental habits. You know, it leads to people, you know, being able to to self-reflect, to engage with nuanced arguments and also to kind of train in a very sophisticated form of empathy because, you know, you kind of have to to do the work of reading and then you can kind of understand, you know, the situation and the inner life of, you know, a character who might live in a radically different time period or context. And it really helps you empathize with them. And it’s not exactly clear what, you know, what will take that, what will take that place if, you know, people read, much less.
Krys Boyd [00:23:02] For all the facts that we learn in high school and in college. If we go, it seems to me, rose that one critical but underappreciated skill is the ability to push through frustration, right? To do something we don’t necessarily enjoy every minute just because it’s worth doing. Is that not something students are expected to learn anymore?
Rose Horowitch [00:23:24] I think it is something that, you know, professors are noticing more and more that their students are struggling with. And, you know, the professors that I spoke with, most of them were trying to figure out, you know, how can we potentially shorten our reading list but also train students to push through something that’s not immediately interesting or rewarding. You know, and if we have to go back a few steps, you know, we’ll do that and, you know, still hopefully end up at the same point. But I do think that, you know, more and more students are arriving at college having not been expected to learn that. And it’s certainly not something that if you’re on your smartphone or social media that you would ever need to do because there’s, you know, sort of instant gratification or you can slip away to a different time. So I do I do think that, you know, it’s something that that students are struggling with more and more.
Krys Boyd [00:24:16] Based on the timing of this phenomenon that so many educators that you spoke with talked about. The most obvious culprit here would be smartphones. Have these devices made it possible for people to reach young adulthood without ever really having experienced boredom?
Rose Horowitch [00:24:33] I mean, I think that some of the, you know, professors and psychologists I was speaking with, you know, were saying that, you know, we they we get sort of more accustomed to, you know, always being entertained and to not, you know, having to to kind of push through. And so it does make it more challenging, You know, when you come across something that was written a long time ago and is therefore, you know, paced very differently then, you know, things are today. So, you know, it’s difficult to know exactly what effect, you know, devices might be having because it’s still so early. And, you know, there aren’t, you know, sort of they haven’t been, you know, fully studied. But it, you know, is definitely something that the professors that I was speaking with, you know, they were noticing that that kind of struggle with pushing through frustration or pushing through, you know, boredom and nothing happening that, you know, that seems to kind of coincide with the rise of smartphones.
Krys Boyd [00:25:36] Well, note again, Rose, that you were very much part of this generation of students that professors are worried about. Did you look around in college and and noticed a lot of your peers being unable to get through books or refusing to get through books?
Rose Horowitch [00:25:50] I did. I think that was definitely something that, you know, came up in my my personal experience. You know, when I when I spoke with, you know, adults in my life or, you know, the professors, you know, it did seem that our reading lists were shorter than they used to be. And also that, you know, students just, you know, we won. We read less for fun outside of class. And also, you know, that we might have completed less reading then, you know, people used to. And, you know, I would say, you know, as we discussed, you know, students were always very, very busy at school. And that was something that the professors that I spoke with said. But, you know, again, it just reading was not the priority often.
Krys Boyd [00:26:38] What do you think makes you different?
Rose Horowitch [00:26:39] I mean, I love to read and I do think that a lot of my, you know, peers, you know, also really enjoyed reading. But it is, you know, I mean, it is challenging to to find the time. There are a lot of different pressures and, you know, cultural messaging, you know, that, you know, it isn’t always the most important way to spend time. And so, you know, I, I think I was I was lucky to have teachers who, you know, pointed me towards books that I loved and, you know, really inspired an appreciation of reading. But, you know, as I said, it’s you know, it still is sometimes challenging to find the time to to get through a long book and to to have that focus.
Krys Boyd [00:27:23] You found some teachers, even of AP literature courses in high school have cut reading lists at least in half. What did they tell you about why they felt they needed to do this? I can’t imagine a lot of them were happy to do that.
Rose Horowitch [00:27:37] Yes. So, I mean, a lot of them were saying that, you know, I mean, they were they were doing it in response to, you know, what their students were were kind of prepared to handle. You know, none of the teachers that I spoke with wanted to be, you know, asking their students to to read something that, you know, then, you know, totally overwhelmed them or have their students, you know, arrive in class, you know, not having completed, you know, even most of the reading. And some of them some of the teachers I spoke with, you know, did see advantages to shortening the reading lists. And, you know, they were saying people have, you know, been been skimming their assigned books for a long time and, you know, have probably never completed their homework. And, you know, so maybe they could read fewer books, but, you know, read them better and really dig into them. So, you know, that was sort of the the hope and the, you know, kind of flip side of all of this. But yeah, I think I think that, you know, most of the high school teachers and professors that I spoke with, you know, we’re really responding to what their students were either willing or able to do.
Krys Boyd [00:28:50] One thing that occurred to me reading your piece was that maybe young people now feel more empowered to raise their hand and say they’re overwhelmed by the reading, whereas I’m Gen X and we might have skimmed a book and just barely followed along and and hope nobody noticed. But we wouldn’t have dreamed of mentioning that to a professor.
Rose Horowitch [00:29:11] Yes, that was something that came up in my reporting. And, you know, the professors, some of the professors I spoke with were kind of wondering, you know, how much that was a factor versus an actual underlying change in ability. And I think, you know, for for the professors that I was speaking with, they thought it was sort of a combination that, you know, students were willing more willing to tell them up front that, you know, they couldn’t that the reading list was going to be impossible than they than they might have used than they might have been before. But, you know, also that there was something else going on. One other place where where that kind of came up was, you know, at the end of the piece, I returned again to Nick Dames’s class, and he was talking about, you know, when he asks students their favorite book, what they say. And, you know, he was saying that that students used to, you know, sort of namedrop a lot of classics in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. And now, you know, about half of his students say, you know, a young adult book like Percy Jackson or The Hunger Games. And so that might also be a shift in just, you know, what also what students feel feel comfortable sharing.
Krys Boyd [00:30:21] Rose Like you, I’ve always been a reader. It’s a huge part of my job. So I never got out of the habit. I wonder sometimes if some young people who haven’t been pushed to read books just don’t know that they could do it if they tried hard enough, Like because no one has expected this of them. They assume this is something that is beyond their capacity.
Rose Horowitch [00:30:45] I think that’s definitely a factor that’s, you know, in play here because, you know, as we discussed, you know, these students can read like they know how to read books. And so they you know, it’s it’s more a question of, you know, have they been, you know, kind of pushed or expected and kind of empowered to, you know, to read at, you know, a fast pace or at a kind of deep level? And, you know, I think professors were finding that, you know, when they did kind of push students to do it, you know, and, you know, maybe shorten their reading list, but then, you know, really expect students to have read books with more care or that, you know, they could. And so I think that is that is kind of, you know, cause for hope.
Krys Boyd [00:31:29] To go back to these high school teachers who have cut their reading lists or the reading lists they might have assigned 10 or 15 years ago. What are they assigning in place of those books?
Rose Horowitch [00:31:38] I think, you know, one factor is, you know, high school teachers have, you know, kind of tried to to place more emphasis on, you know, different mediums. So, you know, maybe podcasts or audiobooks or Ted talks. And also tried to kind of. Yeah. Well, one teacher, you know, did did tell me that she was supplementing her works, you know, with Ted Talks. And so I think there there’s been more of an emphasis on kind of like media literacy and, you know, teaching students to to kind of, you know, interact with all these, you know, other forms that they will be encountering in their life. So that that’s definitely something that they’ve you know, that’s taken the place.
Krys Boyd [00:32:18] Media literacy is a really interesting thing to focus on, and I hadn’t considered how much time that might take in the current environment that did not affect the people who today are professors when they were young people, it wasn’t quite so toxic when they encountered written material in other formats.
Rose Horowitch [00:32:37] Yes, I the same. There’s a like the largest high school English teachers union. They they put out a statement a few years ago, you know, talking about the importance of media literacy and, you know, kind of the need to to de-emphasize, you know, reading for books and instead shift to more or, you know, kind of alternative forms and works.
Krys Boyd [00:33:03] Just to play devil’s advocate here and to make some older listeners heads explode. Do we know for certain that reading books is actually really important? Like what makes a great work of written fiction better for our minds than, say, a season of prestige TV?
Rose Horowitch [00:33:21] I mean, I think, you know, people do make that argument. You know, one thing that I that I found really compelling in my reporting was just that, you know, there’s so much like knowledge and humanity kind of passed down through the rest out to us, you know, through these written works. And, you know, we haven’t yet figured out a way to really translate that into maybe, you know, a more accessible form. So, you know, not a knock on TV or anything, but just, you know, the importance of, you know, kind of being able to access, you know, kind of things that people left to us, you know, from a long time ago. You know, that is something that we maybe haven’t figured out without reading books.
Krys Boyd [00:34:03] I do know adults in my age cohort that were required, some would say forced to read so much in college that when they got out of school, they were like, never again. Or, you know, it took a very long time. Is there something about forcing students to read things that actually makes reading a joyless endeavor?
Rose Horowitch [00:34:24] That wasn’t something that came up in in my reporting. But the professors that I spoke with, you know, did talk about how they didn’t want to put too many things on the reading list and then, you know, not really engage deeply with any of them. So I do think that there there is some things are having the time to, you know, really like notice the intricacies and you know little bit beautiful parts of a work you know that will lead people to love reading much more than just trying to rush through a large number of books.
Krys Boyd [00:34:57] I won’t make you speak specifically about your employer, The Atlantic. However, I will note that a lot of publications that are available online now include a little summary next to the headline of an article of how long you might be expected to spend reading it. I mean, is the publishing industry of of periodicals thinking about shrinking reading attention spans?
Rose Horowitch [00:35:23] That was not something that, you know, came up in in my reporting. But I, I mean, I did, you know, talk to people who were worried about, you know, the publishing industry, you know, of books and just, you know, declining demand there. And you know what that that would sort of mean for for the future because, you know, you know, if people are reading much less that will have, you know, big kind of economic effects.
Krys Boyd [00:35:51] There are surely college professors who find it appalling that top students are not prepared to engage with what was once considered standard university level reading materials. They’re amending the ways they teach. Are they also amending what they expect of students? Are they dumbing down their courses?
Rose Horowitch [00:36:08] I think that they’re definitely, you know, amending their their reading lists, as we discussed. And I think they’re, you know, adopting a more an idea that, you know, they their students will no longer arrive doing what they might have expected they would do. And so they need to teach them. But, you know, one one thing that I mentioned in my article is also, you know, the statistics on on grade inflation are, you know, also very shocking. I think it was like 79% of grades at Harvard were like in the A range just a few years ago. So, you know, students don’t really have to read to to still get a very good grade.
Krys Boyd [00:36:54] Yeah, I remember being really surprised a number of years ago. I came across something that John Kennedy, the John F Kennedy, the president had written in college. I think he went to Harvard and he’d received a C on it. And you think to yourself, no C student could possibly, you know, rise to the level of president. But it wasn’t like that was an abnormal grade then. C meant you did average coursework among your, your peers and that’s what you got. It’s strange to think that, like, it’s not enough to just get into Princeton and earn an undergrad degree or any of the other elite schools. Somehow every student there expects to maintain an average.
Rose Horowitch [00:37:31] Yes. And I think that also, you know, ends up leading to kind of the the emphasis being placed on on things outside of the classroom, as you were discussing. Because, you know, if you can kind of expect to get an A, no matter what. You know, the way to differentiate yourself is to to then, you know, ascend in extracurriculars or in internships. So that sort of seems to be a byproduct of this great inflation that we’re seeing.
Krys Boyd [00:38:00] The reality is. Rose students who think, you know, deeply engaging with and fully understanding Middlemarch is not going to get me a job at Google. They’re not wrong about that.
Rose Horowitch [00:38:12] Yes. They are not wrong. And so I think, you know, a lot of the professors that I was speaking with, you know, we’re trying to figure out how they kind of make the case for the importance of humanistic study kind of on its own terms and just the way that that will, you know, train people to be, you know, a more engaged person, a more empathetic person, a person who, you know, is able to deal with and kind of reason through more, you know, nuanced arguments. So, you know, that was something that was there was on a lot of their minds was how to to sort of, you know, make the case that, you know, studying the humanities is a value.
Krys Boyd [00:38:58] Do young people I mean, I can’t expect you to speak for your entire generation, but but I’m curious as to whether people recommend books to friends and then have conversations about those books.
Rose Horowitch [00:39:12] That. I mean, it is difficult to say. I mean, you know, we we do see that, you know, folk talk is, you know, thriving. And that romance novel sales, you know, appear to be doing very well and kind of, you know, an exception to this trend. So, you know, those are two data points that would suggest that, you know, young people are kind of reading, but, you know, on their own terms. But at the same time, you know, you can find a lot of data points that, you know, people report enjoying reading less. They report, you know, and they report, you know, not really enjoying going to the library. So, you know, there there is a lot of data that, you know, reading is declining. Young people, you know, enjoy it much less. But there’s these to, you know, kind of counter points.
Krys Boyd [00:40:07] I have come across the hypothesis that Americans of all ages may be reading fewer full length books, but they’re not spending any less time than they ever were engaging with printed materials. What is it about sort of finding your way through a whole book that might have complicated themes and many characters and different ideas? What is it that makes that a more demanding experience than a day of reading headlines and and social media messages and articles?
Rose Horowitch [00:40:40] Well, something that I found very compelling that one of the professors I spoke with, you know, was talking about was, you know, he really wanted students to kind of have the option to or just the ability to be able to read things that would have lasting value to them and to kind of be able to actively choose what to read. And, you know, a lot of books we know are going to you know, they’re going to still be important, you know, in ten years, you know, they’re going to, you know, potentially inform, you know, people’s lives in a way that, you know, if you read an Instagram comment or a tweet and you’re. You know, very passively, you know, it’s not going to kind of matter to you in the future. And it’s, you know, not something that you’re really electing to read. And so I think that that, you know, was one concern. And then also just, you know, if you if you stay with a character through a journey, you know, it does really, you know, help you feel empathy for them, you know, expand, you know, your thinking, you know, about different complex themes or questions, you know, where whereas if you were, you know, constantly just kind of switching between different things, you know, and getting, you know, as many words as we used to, you know, it isn’t the same kind of like active, you know, challenge.
Krys Boyd [00:42:11] The other thing about having some number of books that people with some certain amount of education can be expected to be familiar with is that it provides or has provided a shared frame of reference for people. And it does feel as if less and less. This is a thing in America like we we don’t all experience the same media. We don’t have the same shared viewpoints. I wonder if we’re losing something simply because we haven’t engaged with the same materials as other people.
Rose Horowitch [00:42:43] Yeah, that’s I mean, that’s definitely an interesting, you know, argument. And, you know, something that that came up in some of my reporting and research for this article. And so, you know, in some ways, you know, as we discussed, it is, you know, good if we’re we’re adding, you know, new books to kind of the, you know, the pantheon of what people could be expected to read. But, you know, yeah, it is it is kind of challenging and potentially does drive people further apart if there isn’t sort of this shared knowledge base, you know, and kind of background that, you know, everyone can can kind of be expected to, you know, be able to to talk about and to to connect about.
Krys Boyd [00:43:31] Rose, did any of the professors you spoke to think there might be any hope of reversing these trends? Or is this something we’re going to be living with from here on out?
Rose Horowitch [00:43:40] I think that the I mean, the professors that I spoke with, you know, they felt hope in the sense that, you know, they they noticed that their students, you know, as they if they kind of taught them how they expected them to to be reading that students would, you know, sort of could be could be brought, you know, to that level. And, you know, similarly, people reached out to me after the article was published, you know, and talked about how they, you know, have been putting their phones away and kind of, you know, training themselves to attend to things for, you know, more and more time. And, you know, as we discussed earlier, I think it’s like we don’t know where we’re heading. And, you know, the way people read has always been a source of concern and, you know, always changed, but somehow always been okay. So I think that that that is also a real source of hope.
Krys Boyd [00:44:35] Rose Horowitch is assistant editor at The Atlantic, which published her article, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” Rose, thank you for the conversation.
Rose Horowitch [00:44:44] Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Krys Boyd [00:44:47] Think is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and wherever you get your podcasts, just search for KERA Think to find us. Our website is think.kera.org and that’s where you can learn about upcoming shows and sign up for our free weekly newsletter. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
