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Full Books

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Either all these kids are orphans living in the jungle among wolves, or I have no idea what schools even have to do with it. The focus, the patience, the inner calm and the coherent sense of self needed to read a novel are formed way before anybody goes to school.

The article specifies that it’s talking about students from wealthy families. These aren’t parents who couldn’t finish high school and are working 3 jobs to make ends meet. This isn’t an academic issue. It’s a psychological one. No school can overwrite what’s created at home. People who read novels have a certain psychological make-up. It’s simply a fact.

10 responses to “Full Books”

  1. Amanda Avatar
    Amanda

    what is the psychological make up? I’ve never not read so I don’t have any idea what that is. But we did have to read entire books l when I was in 6th-12th grades. E would be assigned to read a certain number of pages each night and we would discuss in class. I’m sure some kids didn’t bother but all my friends did the work

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  2. xykademiqz Avatar
    xykademiqz

    If parents don’t read, their kids won’t read. There’s no way to imbue kids with a love of literature or science or learning in general if the parents themselves are not into the life of the mind. (Just like two introverted couch-potato parents can’t be surprised when their kids are not athletes or social butterflies. Btw, I’m the one of the couch potatoes, but you can bet all my kids enjoy reading and are very serious about school.) The problem is that even many wealthy and high-achieving parents (such as those sending kids to Columbia) are fundamentally anti-intellectual and rather shallow in their values and pursuits, with focus on earnings and prestige through looks and material gains. They really shouldn’t be surprised if that’s what their kids absorbed.
    Btw, a vast majority of my students (technical discipline) don’t read for pleasure, ever. The last time any of them read a book was in high school, required reading for English. I’ve been polling them for years now, and have yet to find what I would consider an avid reader. At best, you have boys who like to play fantasy games and occasionally (very occasionally) might read a fantasy novel.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Even among professors of literature, one doesn’t meet voracious readers often. I have a vivid memory of every such person I met in my profession because they are not that frequent.

      People are missing out, is all I can say. There’s nothing like an intense life of bookish pursuits. And it’s actually quite inexpensive in comparison to other interests. With the rise of digital readers, one has to make serious efforts to avoid getting access to tons of great reading matter.

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      1. xykademiqz Avatar
        xykademiqz

        Truly! I read 200+ books per year and pay nothing other than the price of Kindle Unlimited. Anything not on KU is covered by my Kindle rewards, the reward monies from my credit card, or I can borrow an ebook from the library through Overdrive/Libby and again read on Kindle.

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    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Was about to say… I couldn’t possibly stop my kids from reading. My eldest spends his mowing money on books, and I am inundated with ebook download requests, library lists, book wishlists… I have had to institute a book limit on trips to thrift stores, because our 9 bookshelves are already crammed.

      This is familial. When we were kids, my mother, a teacher, used to bring home all the good books from the school library discard bin. We had shelves in every room– shelves perched on top of shelves, shelves in the hallway, and most of our books had the little library pockets glued into the front cover, and “DISCARD” stamped inside. We used the old due date cards as bookmarks.

      But… in all of middle and high school, I think I read maybe three whole not-chopped-up books as assignments. School was never going to do that for us. Stupid to blame education. I did, however, do entire research papers in history and economics using my parents’ home library.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        –at one point, I had to make a household rule against *renting out bookshelf space* because my mercenary second child was extorting his brother to warehouse his oversized volumes.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          That is so cute. 🙂 Kids do tend to get to a stage where a need to make money possesses them. It’s mega sweet.

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  3. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Somewhat related. Someone got into college without learning to read or write (was even a honor roll student lol) and is suing public schools for failing to teach her.

    Somewhat related: “Quite a lot going on here, but perhaps the most notable thing is that UConn no longer requires literacy for admission”

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      People who want to be “very special cookies” with a litany of fashionable diagnoses need to remember that it’s a game reserved for the wealthy. When the poor try to play it, the results are always sad for them.

      As for UConn, I speak literal truth when I say that there are no more barriers to admission at the overwhelming majority of colleges in the US. Anybody can go. The entire higher education has been redefined and nobody even noticed.

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        The “disability” was a speech impediment (not a learning disability) and ADHD, which is a fake disability.

        Also, the lack of agency here is appalling, even for this generation. Ok, maybe the system didn’t figure out that you weren’t literate, but you knew. You knew you didn’t know how to read and write. You knew this in grade 6. Didn’t do anything. Then grade 7, then grade 8, all the way until it was time to graduate from college and you got your first experience of reality. Days passed by, then weeks, then years, but you didn’t do anything. Didn’t feel bad that you didn’t have the literacy skills of a toddler.

        The last psychiatrist, whose blog I love, has written a lot about narcissism and this seems like a classic example of it. These are people driven by shame, not guilt. Guilt is felt even when you’re alone. Shame is felt only when the world finds out. Sh

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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