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E-PrinceIn the last month, how many of you have read four books or more for your own pleasure?" I asked the students in my NES 201: Introduction to the Middle East precept. Bewildered eyes stared at me, but nobody raised ...(back to the article)
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This is absolutely fantastic. Well done, Yaron.
It's about time something was written in the Prince that wasn't self-congratulatory propaganda about how smart we are. Would have been better if it was actually written by an undergrad, but I'll take it.
I for one read a lot as a child. A lot of that was trash, until my father decided that he would not buy me any more books until I read Jane Eyre. Still, my middle school years were spent reading the great 19th C authors, and on occasion slightly newer fare, ranging from Salinger to Rowling. Have I read books for fun since then? Of course. Over winter break I reread Dorian Gray and most of Wilde's society comedies. I also read Umberto Eco's latest novel. But the main problem is that when I have something like 600 pages of assigned reading a week, many of which are in a foreign language, it's extremely hard to get all of it done, much less, do some reading on the side. Some, not all, professors can be excessive, if not sadistic (though I have wondered from time to time), in the amount of reading they assign. As to the writing seminars, as an undergrad, I thought mine was largely useless. Some are supposedly very good; I hated mine, and when the following semester one of my professors handed out a writing guide, I wondered why he couldn't have been my writing instructor instead. The problem with the papers probably has more to do with the fact that students don't proofread as closely as they should than with the fact that they're lousy writers because they don't read for fun. And again, it's hard to spend too much time revising one's papers given everything else we have to do.
Great article. As an aside, I would have loved to read for pleasure during college, but it wasn't practicable. I had 1600 pages of ASSIGNED reading a WEEK during my junior year. I too read a ton as a child and high schooler, and do again now that I'm not a student. I was fortunate to have a great roommate at PU who helped to edit my papers as I edited his. We made each other much better writers over four years.
Most classes dedicate a portion of the grade (I've seen as much as 35%) to "class participation." If you want preceptees to read assigned work and contribute in class, you need to wave the carrot of a good grade before their eyes. Learn your preceptees' names in the first couple of weeks and let them know that you take the class participation grade seriously and those that do not consistently contribute with substance will likely earn a C or lower for their participation grade. It's really that simple. As for reading outside of class... what we do in what very little leisure time we have really shouldn't effect our ability to contribute to precepts.
Thank you all for your comments. I would like to clarify one point: if one is used to reading from an early age, he/she will probably enjoy doing so in college as well. If you don't have time to read beyond the assigned readings, that's fine. It doesn't matter what you read for as long as you do it. What is quite disconcerting is that there are too many students that generally don't read to satisfy intellectual curiosities, not that they don't find the time to do it during college because they are busy preparing for classes. If the volume of assigned reading was solely responsible for the widespread phenomenon of students not reading, I probably wouldn't have been writing this column. One more thing. Teachers recognize students who are natural readers easily: they understand what they have read for class and are capable of analyzing a text and criticising its arguments. Students who never or hardly read before college, or who prefer Wikipedia over a serious work of scholarship, usually can't do that, and they immediately stand out once serious discussion begins (or should I say, "stand down"? because those are the students who try to avoid the teacher's eyes, remain quiet, yawn often, and when called upon utter a few sentences that sound sophisticated but are actually senseless). So, if you feel that what I've been saying here does not represent you, perhaps you belong to the (too) few who do read.
As juvenile as this sounds, reading quizzes in precept would substantially increase participation in precepts. I was in a grad seminar last fall where we had a reading quiz that consisted of one very simple, one-line answer question that would be easy had you done the reading and nearly impossible had you not done it.
I'm an undergraduate. I love to read. When I return home on break, or after my finals have been completed in the Spring, the first thing I do is go to the public library and borrow an enormous stack of books to devour for my personal pleasure.
Unfortunately, reading for pleasure --and often for class-- is all but impossible here. Each of my classes assigns enough reading to keep me occupied for an entire week, and I take five classes. The problem is not that I don't read for precept, it's that I can't. If professors would (instead of loading students down with nonsensical amounts of reading that obviously won't get done) simply assign manageable amounts of reading, I would actually have the time to read them, contemplate, remember them, and contribute when it came time to discuss them. Oh, and I'd actually learn something, too. The only real knowledge I get from my reading now is the best way to B.S.
Maybe the author of this piece should tell his students read for pleasure instead of for precept...
As another poster said, if you want everyone to do the reading, create some accountability. Give reading quizzes every week that get counted into the final grade of the class. There's nothing wrong with a humanities professor testing whether students are keeping up with his or her class, just like there's nothing wrong with a math/science professor assigning problem sets. Of course, students should then be expected to read a reasonable amount of material, which they aren't in most POL and HIS classes.