LIESE-SPENCER: Academic expectations discourage students from reading
This month, an article from The Atlantic titled "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books" by Rose Horowitch has garnered significant attention for the bleak conclusions it draws about college and high school students' changing reading habits. According to interviews with professors at elite institutions, students come into college without the ability to read or even much experience immersing themselves in long-form work.
Horowitch observes that high schools increasingly rely on articles, excerpts and essays to teach the analytical skills necessary to perform on standardized tests. Courses with fewer full-length books assigned have rendered a generation of students unable to understand and grapple with the complexity of in-depth reading experiences.
She points to schools' focus on skills and smartphone use resulting in shortened attention spans and a change in what is seen as worthy of attention, lamenting that reading books recreationally has become more of a subculture than a standard human experience. And she is not wrong.
As a first-year student who recently graduated from high school, I found many of Horowitch's points relatable, but I think it is also important to view the changes in reading habits she observes within the context of an increasingly competitive meritocratic landscape.
Educational meritocracy — the system in which students access opportunities, particularly acceptance into elite colleges and future jobs, based on demonstrated abilities — is also responsible for a steep decline in recreational reading.
Educational meritocracy values the quantifiable, meaning that test scores, Advanced Placement (AP) classes and expensive extracurricular activities take center stage throughout high school. It is important to remember that such activities require enormous resources. Students are twice as likely to be accepted into Ivy League universities if their families are in the top 1 percent of the income distribution.
Reading for its own sake is rarely prioritized in such a landscape, though it is no less educationally valuable than the aforementioned pursuits. It is also widely accessible — books can be borrowed from friends, classrooms and libraries. And yet, reading, for its many benefits, is a personal, exploratory experience that cannot easily be quantified or displayed on a college application.
Studying for exams, completing hours of homework and cultivating a profile that "tells one's story" to impress college admissions eats up so much time that many high-achieving high school students have little space left even for life-sustaining necessities like sleep.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 84 percent of high school seniors did not get enough sleep in 2021, an increase from 2009. If students cannot prioritize their physical and mental health, it should be unsurprising that they no longer read recreationally.
One could argue that meritocracy is not entirely to blame for the lack of sleep and leisure. Students manage to spend hours on social media every day. According to the Pew Research Center, 95 percent of teenagers use smartphones and approximately 3 in 4 admit their daily screen time is higher than they wish.
That said, social media usage and meritocracy are not disconnected. Literature requires full immersion, and when we are constantly interrupted by school, assignments and other activities, passive forms of entertainment like social media that can fit into the margins gain significant appeal.
Meritocracy is deeply intertwined with the capitalist ideal of individualism, which reading defies. Though reading is generally a solitary affair, it is never an individual experience. When we read, we immerse ourselves in someone else's mind and story, inhabiting their contradictions.
Where meritocracy emphasizes the myth of an equal playing field, literature exposes us to characters with a complex array of struggles, flaws and backstories, rarely providing easy answers. Books encourage empathy regarding the intricacies of characters and their plights rather than condemnation when they fail.
Throughout high school, many of my peers only read full-length books that were assigned for class. My high school courses generally required the completion of multiple books each year, but in classes with required reading, we were typically urged to extract particular predetermined messages that related to a broader topic we were studying.
In AP courses, books were usually read as part of a unit rather than for reading's sake. While this helped us ace our exams, when a book is analyzed through a specific lens or with a certain conclusion in mind, we inevitably miss out on the multiplicity inherent to literature.
This is in no way the fault of individual teachers — I loved many of my high school English teachers and found their classes engaging. Teachers are also victims of the increasingly competitive educational model, which requires them to conform to the demanding AP curriculum and leaves little room for creativity.
Moving forward, elite universities that are receiving an influx of students who struggle to read full books should consider reforming their application requirements and avoid placing an outsized emphasis on measurable skills and excessive activities at the expense of all else. In the polarized, frenzied world we inhabit, we must not allow the opportunity to immerse ourselves in other worlds to become a relic of the past.
Beatrice Liese-Spencer is a first-year Mason Gross School of the Arts student majoring in art and design. Liese-Spencer’s column, “What’s the Verdict,” runs on alternate Wednesdays.
Columns, cartoons, letters and commentaries do not necessarily reflect the views of the Targum Publishing Company or its staff.
YOUR VOICE | The Daily Targum welcomes submissions from all readers. Letters to the editor must be between 350 and 600 words. Commentaries must be between 600 and 900 words. All authors must include their name, phone number, class year and college affiliation or department to be considered for publication. Please submit via email to oped@dailytargum.com and eic@dailytargum.com to be considered for publication.
