I could write an entire article about the tragedy of this. My experiences as a 5th grade teacher, as well as a parent whose kids have learned pretty much nothing in their English classes, have put me in despair regarding literature and literacy in public schools.
A couple of miserable anecdotes:
My official ELA program demands I read the majority of the texts in class out loud--it's just too much to expect 10-year-olds to read on their own and understand what is being read, according to them.
I was told by a district ELA administrator that we should never "waste time" reading anything longer than 2-3 pages. I have actually had my job threatened because I have my students read novels.
When my daughter was assigned to "read" Fahrenheit 451 for her high school English class, the teacher played YouTube videos summarizing the sections for the students. They watched three 5-minute videos summarizing the three sections of the novel and called it good. Nobody in class was expected to actually read anything. But they had 3 class periods where they talked about their emotions and how they feel about censorship. The teacher was completely oblivious the irony that it was Fahrenheit 451.
The problem is so, so, so, SO bad. And yet when I vocally try to make things better, I get dozens of district midwits jumping down my throat.
It's true. And there's a reason why. How are critical thinking skills developed? By leading challenging tasks that demand kids piece together information, search for meaning in multiple places, problem-solve, and analyze/synthesize complex information.
Reading challenging, complex novels. Advanced algebra, calculus, and geometry (I can't say enough about how much geometry and proofs develop logical thinking skills), and using the scientific process.
These happen to be the exact things that are being eliminated from schools.
What's often missed about Farenheit 451 is that it's about television as much as censorship. Now of course we are two major technologies beyond that (computer and internet) and it's almost come true. They just haven't gotten around to banning books yet.
I teach English at a (non-elite) uni and it’s been shocking how many basic skills my students lack - writing, reading, etc, all sort of tied to attention span and to how digital reading changes how we read, even physically. But this was also a noticeable thing in the English department where I got my BA, I was homeschooled and had an apparently very intense literature education from it, so I’d also expected more competition and likemindedness going in to an English major. Nope, my STEM major friends read more and better. Most of the other undergrads were offended that YA wasn’t in survey courses or, at best, assume their AP classes in high school had given them everything they needed to know to be well-read. My family was obsessive about literacy in a way I hadn’t realised was unusual, probably in large part because of religion, and for that I’m eternally grateful. Anyway yeah, I’ll stop the blogging, that’s all just to say - thanks for this cathartic piece and I feel the same pain!
I've always had the fantasy intellectually curious engineers and scientists were going to be a big part of the renaissance in literature. You're drawing from a less politicized pool and they're often able to read closely, albeit in a different way. A math textbook often requires 'close reading', albeit of a different sort--you're not wondering about the author's motivations or parsing his choice of words, but you do have to work out the equations they are telling you over and over, and often you have to look at that derivation closely to really get what they're doing. I suspect the part of your brain you're using is too different, but you never know.
I think you’re onto something for sure - I’ve noticed that my STEM friends who read literature come into a work with a pretty blank slate. Like, they approach it without some preconceived notion of whether they’ll like it or what it’ll be “about” and then they’ll pick it apart more honestly even if they like it. It’s hard to phrase what my point is, I agree that it’s a different kind of close reading. And I’m not even referring to political agendas among the humanities types, it’s just that STEM readers cut some kind of Gordian knot and just look at the letters on the page more naturally. My STEM friends tend to be fond of formalist methods of interpretation if they read about them, and can end up liking poetry because of New Critical ideas, while humanities majors tend to dislike just staying in the text.
Interesting! But I should clarify that's STEM people into literature, who are a small subset of STEM people; most are going to play video games, and I'd bet even the ones who read books are really going to be into scifi.
It's interesting to see which types of criticism they gravitate to; I would expect it to be the most analogous to their training in the sciences. From what I understand that's the case, the formalists and the New Critics tend to restrict themselves to the text...almost as if it were a series of equations to decode or a problem to solve.
Yeah, they tend to either stick to just the text or minimal context and they gave readers most of the methods we now use as standard close reading. So they gave directly and broadly useful methods and terms that add on to the older study of prosody. Few people just do totally formalist criticism like a lot of ye olden New Critics but I think it’s crucial for students of literature to learn their basic methods and STEM students seem more game for that than English majors who are often more interested in political methods.
Interesting. So the pool of people actually going into English these days are politically motivated. I hadn't thought of that, and that's depressing, but it totally makes sense--your Liza Libes types who are just passionate about great literature are going to get discouraged and go elsewhere.
Yeah, I was considered quite snobbish and conservative for dissing many YA books’ quality. Evaluating quality is a no-no overall. There was a great piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed lately by Michael Clune about how academia was asking for the ramped-up conservative backlash, and one point he makes is that teaching the great works does actually end up making studenrs realise that there are things that matter outside of money or capital or however one terms it. So that ends up potentially meeting leftist goals too but without switching to teaching Instagram slam poetry. That’s what an apparently really intense homeschool lit curriculum did for me, not politically but personality-wise it made me less money-chasing. It benefits everyone. But also political readings of works are really easy to churn out - I recall one fellow undergrad writing a final paper in a senior-level seminar that concluded that Virginia Woolf was feminist. That’s a lot easier than learning technical skillsets like narratology or poetics.
This is a particular affliction of American students, and I blame the poisonous ideology that has overtaken the Humanities department in the US (memorably called here "the Marxist clown show"). When I taught at Tel-Aviv University, Venice International University and in Hong Kong, my students, many of whom had difficulty with English, were avid readers in whatever their primary language was. When at the beginning of a class I asked how many read science fiction or fantasy for pleasure, a forest of hands went up. So, what is going on in the US? Do not blame social media, which is global. Blame the ideological brainwashing in the academy. Thank you, Lisa, for pointing this out.
Terrifying article but it mirrors everything that I have seen myself and heard from friends of mine that are teachers across quite a few grade levels and schools. I don't imagine that this is about to get any better either with ChatGPT and other AI tools becoming more widely available. I wonder what effect this will have on society, I don't think it leads anywhere good. But maybe I'm just part of an aging generation holding onto a relic of a quickly fading past.
One of the problems you mentioned in passing--swapping books for study guides. Instead of a joint discussion of important works, literary appreciation has been over-bureaucratized into endless writing of dissertations that the student, depending on the teacher and bias, hopes will strike the right chord with how that teacher thinks of the work. Such guides, while vanilla, offer the "conventional wisdom" on what and how to appreciate certain motifs and ethos. It comes down to grades. If grades were handed out based on contributions in joint discussions, maybe students could enjoy the read instead of fulfilling the bureaucracy. (FROM MY SECRET ARCHIVE OF WHAT I HATED ABOUT SCHOOL AND READING ASSIGNMENTS.)
Yeah. I always suck and still feel stress over interpretations. I feel like there is only one right way to interpret and i will be punished/scolded if i saw things differently. Not to mention that i could interpret the thing in multiple ways and then have a sort of analysis paralysis because i don't know which interpretation was the right one.
Not to mention my teacher was always telling "the author is meaning X" when talking about the creation. Thus it crystalised that there is only one way to interpret the thing. Though i always in my head asked them to cite the author saying that they are meaning this in their creation or the ghost of the author facepalming themselves because the author didn't mean that what the teacher said they did.
Also, dunno if it is a real or fake story, but apparently an author participated in the national exam where there was interpretation of their own work. The result was that the author didn't know what the author meant.
So I think in school it is more that you need to say and see things how the system wants you to see and it can be hard for the people who refuse to lie about what they actually see.
UChicago English department is not that much better at this point. During the covid year, they closed off all PhD English apps unless you were black or were intending to study black literature. I have a conservative contact there in the history department who is continually appalled at the English department's behavior.
I wish I could say what you described in this piece is surprising to me Liza, but it sadly is not. Our public education system and higher education system are a mess. No wonder your experience at Columbia was extremely disappointing. That’s the way it was for me with college too by the way. Your professors didn’t really care about literature but rather grievance studies and analyzing everything through the lens of Marxism and critical theory. Meanwhile, your peers were bored, apathetic and had zero passion. Nor were they prepared given that their teachers never had them read a single book. Not one. So can it be any wonder they put no effort into these courses? It’s just so sad English teachers are not having them read real books and teach them to appreciate them like your grandmother did for you. Instead they’re reading study guides, spark notes, and song lyrics by talentless modern day artists like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar. On top of that English is considered to not be an important subject as is the case with all the humanities (I found the same with the history field as well) while Science, Mathematics and Business are emphasized. The Humanities are also in steep decline on college campuses too. You are absolutely right Liza! We must restore book reading and essay writing as the way English is taught! The fact that high school students and incoming college freshman you work with have either never read a single book or haven’t read one since Middle School is shocking and appalling! Those poor kids are being set up for failure! English and the Humanities must be taken seriously as an important subject again! It was a huge mistake on the part of our leaders to emphasize some subjects while others were deemed passé. Also, Marxism, critical theory and other such nonsense must be abolished from English departments nationwide! I also wanted to say a few words about your interview with Pedro Gonzalez yesterday. I listened to it in its entirety over dinner and I had some things I’d like to say about it as I was unfortunately unable to leave a comment on it due to Pedro requiring you to be a paid subscriber to do so. But anyway, I think you made a lot of excellent points in the podcast as did Pedro. All the awful smut and identity politics filled trash that you see from popular literature today is boring, predictable and has no value whatsoever. No one’s buying it and the mainstream publishing houses are losing billions. Pedro is right that they’ll burn through money just to push their agenda. But in a capitalist economy they can only do that for so long before they go bankrupt and collapse. This will likely be their fate. I know you want to try and get into one of the mainstream publishing houses. But I’m sorry to say (I want to be honest with you Liza) that I don’t think that will be possible. I know it gives you a greater reach than Indie Publishing but I fear you’ll keep getting rejected because of their political biases. I want to see your book published don’t get me wrong, but I think Indie Publishing is your best bet. Coleman Hughes’ agent might be promising and I hope he can help you, but if not have you considered reaching out to Black Sheep Books who published Jake Klein’s book “Redefining Racism?” I know many Indie Publishing Houses are also far-left leaning, but I really think it’s the best route for you to take. I’m sorry I can’t be more optimistic about the big publishing houses, but I don’t trust them with your work. You might also consider contacting FAIR, I believe they did a story on some Indie publishing houses a couple years ago. That might be helpful as well. You also mentioned not being sure what you’d identify as politically. I would say from having gotten to know you and your values a little, you strike me as a libertarian like Jake or Salome.
So sad. So pathetic. Columbia is so elite, it's typical student is functionally illiterate. As a student, please don't complain when you graduate from CU and the biggish corporation doesn't hire you as CEO. I know there will be a tendency to think that is the right thing to do, because if you are from CU, you deserve it!!!
By the way, I also love Russian literature, especially Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn, among others.
I'm going to add another comment, kind of a different take. I think that part of the problem is also a hyper-obsession with things that help us in our careers. We are so much smaller, simpler, less happy people if there is nothing in our lives but careers.
I am a fantasy author, and this has done nothing to help my career as a teacher. I play trombone and perform in both symphonic bands and jazz bands. This does nothing to help my career. I am an amateur astronomer, and hauling out my telescope to look at the heavens doesn't help my career. My love for national parks does nothing to help my career. My very, VERY amateur efforts at painting and drawing do nothing to help my career.
I believe we are meant to be well-rounded people, with a variety of interests and skills. The happiest people I know have dozens of interests and things they love that have nothing to do with their careers.
And yes, I'd put a love of great literature as one of those many things that may have little to do with my career but everything with helping find joy in life.
Last time I spoke to an English professor, whom my friend was dating at the time, instead of asking me what I was reading, she asked what I was watching. Now, that could have just been a way to make conversation with someone you just met, but to me it was indicative of the whole mindset of modern academia; if professors do not read in their spare time, why would anyone else? The default needs to be the opposite, that reading is the norm.
I managed new and use bookstores for decades, still keep my hand in with the used trade, and, as my friend has always know, have stacks and stack of book all over my house. When my father, a STEM professor, took my to camp one summer, he spent the week reading Gibbons Decline and Fall. Reading was the norm, and not just in academic households. But we have let YA slide into adult reading lists, consider Harry Potter, for God's sake, to be adult fare, and people cannot seem to read anything longer than a recipe.
When my son was in high school, he went over to my bookshelf, pulled down my copy of The Windup Bird Chronical, and proceeded to read that for pleasure. He is 30 now, so I know this isn't a dead skill or concept, but it does need to be nurtured.
People are going to have to really start showing up as school board meetings and demanding an end to this because that’s the only way it changes. School boards by and large make these decisions to have kids read or not. Go to the school talk to the principal, sit in your kids class. Demand change.
I could write an entire article about the tragedy of this. My experiences as a 5th grade teacher, as well as a parent whose kids have learned pretty much nothing in their English classes, have put me in despair regarding literature and literacy in public schools.
A couple of miserable anecdotes:
My official ELA program demands I read the majority of the texts in class out loud--it's just too much to expect 10-year-olds to read on their own and understand what is being read, according to them.
I was told by a district ELA administrator that we should never "waste time" reading anything longer than 2-3 pages. I have actually had my job threatened because I have my students read novels.
When my daughter was assigned to "read" Fahrenheit 451 for her high school English class, the teacher played YouTube videos summarizing the sections for the students. They watched three 5-minute videos summarizing the three sections of the novel and called it good. Nobody in class was expected to actually read anything. But they had 3 class periods where they talked about their emotions and how they feel about censorship. The teacher was completely oblivious the irony that it was Fahrenheit 451.
The problem is so, so, so, SO bad. And yet when I vocally try to make things better, I get dozens of district midwits jumping down my throat.
This is absolutely terrifying. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and adding on more evidence to my observations.
Alas, your story also tells us that critical thinking skills are also going by the wayside.
It's true. And there's a reason why. How are critical thinking skills developed? By leading challenging tasks that demand kids piece together information, search for meaning in multiple places, problem-solve, and analyze/synthesize complex information.
Reading challenging, complex novels. Advanced algebra, calculus, and geometry (I can't say enough about how much geometry and proofs develop logical thinking skills), and using the scientific process.
These happen to be the exact things that are being eliminated from schools.
What's often missed about Farenheit 451 is that it's about television as much as censorship. Now of course we are two major technologies beyond that (computer and internet) and it's almost come true. They just haven't gotten around to banning books yet.
I teach English at a (non-elite) uni and it’s been shocking how many basic skills my students lack - writing, reading, etc, all sort of tied to attention span and to how digital reading changes how we read, even physically. But this was also a noticeable thing in the English department where I got my BA, I was homeschooled and had an apparently very intense literature education from it, so I’d also expected more competition and likemindedness going in to an English major. Nope, my STEM major friends read more and better. Most of the other undergrads were offended that YA wasn’t in survey courses or, at best, assume their AP classes in high school had given them everything they needed to know to be well-read. My family was obsessive about literacy in a way I hadn’t realised was unusual, probably in large part because of religion, and for that I’m eternally grateful. Anyway yeah, I’ll stop the blogging, that’s all just to say - thanks for this cathartic piece and I feel the same pain!
I've always had the fantasy intellectually curious engineers and scientists were going to be a big part of the renaissance in literature. You're drawing from a less politicized pool and they're often able to read closely, albeit in a different way. A math textbook often requires 'close reading', albeit of a different sort--you're not wondering about the author's motivations or parsing his choice of words, but you do have to work out the equations they are telling you over and over, and often you have to look at that derivation closely to really get what they're doing. I suspect the part of your brain you're using is too different, but you never know.
I think you’re onto something for sure - I’ve noticed that my STEM friends who read literature come into a work with a pretty blank slate. Like, they approach it without some preconceived notion of whether they’ll like it or what it’ll be “about” and then they’ll pick it apart more honestly even if they like it. It’s hard to phrase what my point is, I agree that it’s a different kind of close reading. And I’m not even referring to political agendas among the humanities types, it’s just that STEM readers cut some kind of Gordian knot and just look at the letters on the page more naturally. My STEM friends tend to be fond of formalist methods of interpretation if they read about them, and can end up liking poetry because of New Critical ideas, while humanities majors tend to dislike just staying in the text.
Interesting! But I should clarify that's STEM people into literature, who are a small subset of STEM people; most are going to play video games, and I'd bet even the ones who read books are really going to be into scifi.
It's interesting to see which types of criticism they gravitate to; I would expect it to be the most analogous to their training in the sciences. From what I understand that's the case, the formalists and the New Critics tend to restrict themselves to the text...almost as if it were a series of equations to decode or a problem to solve.
Yeah, they tend to either stick to just the text or minimal context and they gave readers most of the methods we now use as standard close reading. So they gave directly and broadly useful methods and terms that add on to the older study of prosody. Few people just do totally formalist criticism like a lot of ye olden New Critics but I think it’s crucial for students of literature to learn their basic methods and STEM students seem more game for that than English majors who are often more interested in political methods.
Interesting. So the pool of people actually going into English these days are politically motivated. I hadn't thought of that, and that's depressing, but it totally makes sense--your Liza Libes types who are just passionate about great literature are going to get discouraged and go elsewhere.
Yeah, I was considered quite snobbish and conservative for dissing many YA books’ quality. Evaluating quality is a no-no overall. There was a great piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed lately by Michael Clune about how academia was asking for the ramped-up conservative backlash, and one point he makes is that teaching the great works does actually end up making studenrs realise that there are things that matter outside of money or capital or however one terms it. So that ends up potentially meeting leftist goals too but without switching to teaching Instagram slam poetry. That’s what an apparently really intense homeschool lit curriculum did for me, not politically but personality-wise it made me less money-chasing. It benefits everyone. But also political readings of works are really easy to churn out - I recall one fellow undergrad writing a final paper in a senior-level seminar that concluded that Virginia Woolf was feminist. That’s a lot easier than learning technical skillsets like narratology or poetics.
This is a particular affliction of American students, and I blame the poisonous ideology that has overtaken the Humanities department in the US (memorably called here "the Marxist clown show"). When I taught at Tel-Aviv University, Venice International University and in Hong Kong, my students, many of whom had difficulty with English, were avid readers in whatever their primary language was. When at the beginning of a class I asked how many read science fiction or fantasy for pleasure, a forest of hands went up. So, what is going on in the US? Do not blame social media, which is global. Blame the ideological brainwashing in the academy. Thank you, Lisa, for pointing this out.
Terrifying article but it mirrors everything that I have seen myself and heard from friends of mine that are teachers across quite a few grade levels and schools. I don't imagine that this is about to get any better either with ChatGPT and other AI tools becoming more widely available. I wonder what effect this will have on society, I don't think it leads anywhere good. But maybe I'm just part of an aging generation holding onto a relic of a quickly fading past.
Sorry, was only able to pay attention to the first 140 characters.
Must be somebody else's fault. Squirrel.
I agree with you. I was an English major at a girl’s college in Pennsylvania. We did not read excerpts. We read the whole book. Always.
One of the problems you mentioned in passing--swapping books for study guides. Instead of a joint discussion of important works, literary appreciation has been over-bureaucratized into endless writing of dissertations that the student, depending on the teacher and bias, hopes will strike the right chord with how that teacher thinks of the work. Such guides, while vanilla, offer the "conventional wisdom" on what and how to appreciate certain motifs and ethos. It comes down to grades. If grades were handed out based on contributions in joint discussions, maybe students could enjoy the read instead of fulfilling the bureaucracy. (FROM MY SECRET ARCHIVE OF WHAT I HATED ABOUT SCHOOL AND READING ASSIGNMENTS.)
Yeah. I always suck and still feel stress over interpretations. I feel like there is only one right way to interpret and i will be punished/scolded if i saw things differently. Not to mention that i could interpret the thing in multiple ways and then have a sort of analysis paralysis because i don't know which interpretation was the right one.
Not to mention my teacher was always telling "the author is meaning X" when talking about the creation. Thus it crystalised that there is only one way to interpret the thing. Though i always in my head asked them to cite the author saying that they are meaning this in their creation or the ghost of the author facepalming themselves because the author didn't mean that what the teacher said they did.
Also, dunno if it is a real or fake story, but apparently an author participated in the national exam where there was interpretation of their own work. The result was that the author didn't know what the author meant.
So I think in school it is more that you need to say and see things how the system wants you to see and it can be hard for the people who refuse to lie about what they actually see.
Nailed it
What else could "democratic education" have led to, other than the tyranny of mediocrity and a never-ending-pursuit of the lowest common denominator.
Nothing will change if *that* doesn't change; and currently, that isn't even nameable.
Maybe you should have gone to the University of Chicago. You'd have had better company. But I guess less dismay to fuel the blog. Tradeoffs.
UChicago English department is not that much better at this point. During the covid year, they closed off all PhD English apps unless you were black or were intending to study black literature. I have a conservative contact there in the history department who is continually appalled at the English department's behavior.
Their economics program is great, though!
Not the English department. The committee on social thought. They have an undergrad major called fundamentals.
Seriously, a writer has to have something to say. This could be a blessing in disguise.
Great piece. Appreciate your take.
I wish I could say what you described in this piece is surprising to me Liza, but it sadly is not. Our public education system and higher education system are a mess. No wonder your experience at Columbia was extremely disappointing. That’s the way it was for me with college too by the way. Your professors didn’t really care about literature but rather grievance studies and analyzing everything through the lens of Marxism and critical theory. Meanwhile, your peers were bored, apathetic and had zero passion. Nor were they prepared given that their teachers never had them read a single book. Not one. So can it be any wonder they put no effort into these courses? It’s just so sad English teachers are not having them read real books and teach them to appreciate them like your grandmother did for you. Instead they’re reading study guides, spark notes, and song lyrics by talentless modern day artists like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar. On top of that English is considered to not be an important subject as is the case with all the humanities (I found the same with the history field as well) while Science, Mathematics and Business are emphasized. The Humanities are also in steep decline on college campuses too. You are absolutely right Liza! We must restore book reading and essay writing as the way English is taught! The fact that high school students and incoming college freshman you work with have either never read a single book or haven’t read one since Middle School is shocking and appalling! Those poor kids are being set up for failure! English and the Humanities must be taken seriously as an important subject again! It was a huge mistake on the part of our leaders to emphasize some subjects while others were deemed passé. Also, Marxism, critical theory and other such nonsense must be abolished from English departments nationwide! I also wanted to say a few words about your interview with Pedro Gonzalez yesterday. I listened to it in its entirety over dinner and I had some things I’d like to say about it as I was unfortunately unable to leave a comment on it due to Pedro requiring you to be a paid subscriber to do so. But anyway, I think you made a lot of excellent points in the podcast as did Pedro. All the awful smut and identity politics filled trash that you see from popular literature today is boring, predictable and has no value whatsoever. No one’s buying it and the mainstream publishing houses are losing billions. Pedro is right that they’ll burn through money just to push their agenda. But in a capitalist economy they can only do that for so long before they go bankrupt and collapse. This will likely be their fate. I know you want to try and get into one of the mainstream publishing houses. But I’m sorry to say (I want to be honest with you Liza) that I don’t think that will be possible. I know it gives you a greater reach than Indie Publishing but I fear you’ll keep getting rejected because of their political biases. I want to see your book published don’t get me wrong, but I think Indie Publishing is your best bet. Coleman Hughes’ agent might be promising and I hope he can help you, but if not have you considered reaching out to Black Sheep Books who published Jake Klein’s book “Redefining Racism?” I know many Indie Publishing Houses are also far-left leaning, but I really think it’s the best route for you to take. I’m sorry I can’t be more optimistic about the big publishing houses, but I don’t trust them with your work. You might also consider contacting FAIR, I believe they did a story on some Indie publishing houses a couple years ago. That might be helpful as well. You also mentioned not being sure what you’d identify as politically. I would say from having gotten to know you and your values a little, you strike me as a libertarian like Jake or Salome.
So sad. So pathetic. Columbia is so elite, it's typical student is functionally illiterate. As a student, please don't complain when you graduate from CU and the biggish corporation doesn't hire you as CEO. I know there will be a tendency to think that is the right thing to do, because if you are from CU, you deserve it!!!
By the way, I also love Russian literature, especially Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn, among others.
I'm going to add another comment, kind of a different take. I think that part of the problem is also a hyper-obsession with things that help us in our careers. We are so much smaller, simpler, less happy people if there is nothing in our lives but careers.
I am a fantasy author, and this has done nothing to help my career as a teacher. I play trombone and perform in both symphonic bands and jazz bands. This does nothing to help my career. I am an amateur astronomer, and hauling out my telescope to look at the heavens doesn't help my career. My love for national parks does nothing to help my career. My very, VERY amateur efforts at painting and drawing do nothing to help my career.
I believe we are meant to be well-rounded people, with a variety of interests and skills. The happiest people I know have dozens of interests and things they love that have nothing to do with their careers.
And yes, I'd put a love of great literature as one of those many things that may have little to do with my career but everything with helping find joy in life.
Last time I spoke to an English professor, whom my friend was dating at the time, instead of asking me what I was reading, she asked what I was watching. Now, that could have just been a way to make conversation with someone you just met, but to me it was indicative of the whole mindset of modern academia; if professors do not read in their spare time, why would anyone else? The default needs to be the opposite, that reading is the norm.
I managed new and use bookstores for decades, still keep my hand in with the used trade, and, as my friend has always know, have stacks and stack of book all over my house. When my father, a STEM professor, took my to camp one summer, he spent the week reading Gibbons Decline and Fall. Reading was the norm, and not just in academic households. But we have let YA slide into adult reading lists, consider Harry Potter, for God's sake, to be adult fare, and people cannot seem to read anything longer than a recipe.
When my son was in high school, he went over to my bookshelf, pulled down my copy of The Windup Bird Chronical, and proceeded to read that for pleasure. He is 30 now, so I know this isn't a dead skill or concept, but it does need to be nurtured.
People are going to have to really start showing up as school board meetings and demanding an end to this because that’s the only way it changes. School boards by and large make these decisions to have kids read or not. Go to the school talk to the principal, sit in your kids class. Demand change.