It turns out that even “elite college students” can’t muster the cerebral capacity and mental acuity to read books.
The edgy title of last week’s article in The Atlantic, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” certainly attracted clicks and evoked the intended volume of outrage. But the subtitle of the article, “To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school,” haughtily points the finger at the wrong assailant.
There are some things that can only be known if you spend your life with teenagers in a modern American high school. And, to be generous, I am glad professors at elite colleges like Columbia and the University of Virginia are finally waking up to the deflating reality that our children’s brains have been utterly soiled by the digital spigot of triviality they endlessly consume.
Rest assured, high school English teachers would absolutely love to assign more books and more reading. They would love to share their bibliophile tendencies with the children sitting in front of them. They would cheer at the prospect of having students read the books they assign.
But they can’t and they know it.
It’s not because of No Child Left Behind or Common Core or because of a “shift in values.” High school English teachers are in the trenches, hearing in real time what journalists and academics will only learn about months or years from now.
For example, teenagers now keep their phones on all night. Why? So,
