Among young people in this generation of American "students," where a
grade point average is seldom below 3.5, there are many who think
Machiavelli's "The Prince" and almost ALL books are NOVELS!
Educators and scholars are finding that fewer and fewer high school and
college students today are thoroughgoing literates. A large percentage
of them find reading "uncool."
And this is a growing concern because studies show that people who
cannot analyze and understand the gist and meaning of what they read
are prone to blind obedience to authority and the foolish and often
harmful mistakes that are bred of IGNORANCE!
The next time you're tempted to gush to the neighbors about your
Brown-bound kid's 4.0, first casually ask your scholar about the books
she or he have been reading. Their answers might be surprising.
------
"Writing Off Reading"
By Michael Skube
OUTLOOK, The Washington Post
Sunday, August 20, 2006; B03
We were talking informally in class not long ago, 17 college sophomores
and I, and on a whim I asked who some of their favorite writers are.
The question hung in uneasy silence. At length, a voice in the rear
hesitantly volunteered the name of . . . Dan Brown.
No other names were offered.
The author of "The DaVinci Code" was not just the best writer they
could think of; he was the only writer they could think of.
In our better private universities and flagship state schools today,
it's hard to find a student who graduated from high school with much
lower than a 3.5 GPA, and not uncommon to find students whose GPAs were
4.0 or higher. They somehow got these suspect grades without having
read much. Or if they did read, they've given it up. And it shows -- in
their writing and even in their conversation.
A few years ago, I began keeping a list of everyday words that may as
well have been potholes in exchanges with college students. It began
with a fellow who was two months away from graduating from a
well-respected Midwestern university.
"And what was the impetus for that?" I asked as he finished a
presentation.
At the word "impetus" his head snapped sideways, as if by reflex. "The
what?" he asked.
"The impetus. What gave rise to it? What prompted it?"
I wouldn't have guessed that impetus was a 25-cent word. But I also
wouldn't have guessed that "ramshackle" and "lucid" were exactly
recondite, either. I've had to explain both. You can be dead certain
that today's college students carry a weekly planner. But they may or
may not own a dictionary, and if they do own one, it doesn't get much
use. ("Why do you need a dictionary when you can just go online?" more
than one student has asked me.)
You may be surprised -- and dismayed -- by some of the words on my
list.
"Advocate," for example. Neither the verb nor the noun was immediately
clear to students who had graduated from high school with GPAs above
3.5. A few others:
"Derelict," as in neglectful.
"Satire," as in a literary form.
"Pith," as in the heart of the matter.
"Brevity," as in the quality of being succinct.
And my favorite: "Novel," as in new and as a literary form. College
students nowadays call any book, fact or fiction, a novel. I have no
idea why this is, but I first became acquainted with the peculiarity
when a senior at one of the country's better state universities wrote a
paper in which she referred to "The Prince" as "Machiavelli's novel."
As freshmen start showing up for classes this month, colleges will have
a new influx of high school graduates with gilded GPAs, and it won't be
long before one professor whispers to another: Did no one teach these
kids basic English? The unhappy truth is that many students are
hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences, to tell a pronoun
from a preposition, even to distinguish between "then" and "than." Yet
they got A's.
How does one explain the inability of college students to read or write
at even a high school level? One explanation, which owes as much to the
culture as to the schools, is that kids don't read for pleasure. And
because they don't read, they are less able to navigate the language.
If words are the coin of their thought, they're working with little
more than pocket change.
Say this -- but no more -- for the Bush administration's No Child Left
Behind Act: It at least recognizes the problem. What we're graduating
from our high schools isn't college material. Sometimes it isn't even
good high school material.
When students with A averages can't write simple English, it shouldn't
be surprising that people ask what a high school diploma is really
worth. In California this year, hundreds of high school students, many
with good grades, faced the prospect of not graduating because they
could not pass a state-mandated exit exam. Although a judge overturned
the effort, legislators (not always so literate themselves) in other
states have also called for exit exams. It's hardly unreasonable to ask
that students demonstrate a minimum competency in basic subjects,
especially English.
Exit exams have become almost a necessity because the GPA is not to be
trusted. In my experience, a high SAT score is far more reliable than a
high GPA -- more indicative of quickness and acuity, and more
reflective of familiarity with language and ideas. College admissions
specialists are of a different view and are apt to label the student
with high SAT scores but mediocre grades unmotivated, even lazy.
I'll take that student any day. I've known such students. They may have
been bored in high school but they read widely and without prodding
from a parent. And they could have nominated a few favorite writers
besides Dan Brown -- even if they thoroughly enjoyed "The DaVinci
Code."
I suspect they would have understood the point I tried unsuccessfully
to make once when I quoted Joseph Pulitzer to my students. It is
journalism's job, he said, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the
comfortable. Too obvious, you think? I might have thought so myself --
if the words "afflicted" and "afflict" hadn't stumped the whole class.
mskube@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Skube teaches journalism at Elon University in Elon, N.C.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006081800976.html
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