Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University's required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames's students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.
the future is r-slurred
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My kid is a junior in high school. I can confirm that his school is more proactive about getting metal detectors than they are assigning an entire book to these children. Of course, most modern books are complete trash, and he has never been asked to read Shakespeare.
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You don't learn reading in school. If your parents haven't managed to interest you in reading it's already too late by the time you get to school asigned reading.
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Just get him books at home to read this isn't rocket science.
Start with the small stuff. Go for fiction first but also move him towards the non-fiction department over time.
My go to recommendation is to start with the highest rated section on goodsreads for whichever category or group of books you think your kid will like and match it against the number of pages you figure your kid can read without completely losing interest.
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