By Riley Dauber
Editor-in-Chief
An article from The Atlantic published on Oct. 1 sparked conversations among the literary and educational communities; college students could not read books and keep up with their assignments.
The article, written by Rose Horowitch, featured interviews with 33 professors. According to Horowitch, “their students struggle through challenging texts or shut down when confronted with ideas they don’t understand.”
One freshman in particular told Columbia University professor Nicholas Dames that she never had to read a book cover-to-cover in high school.
Shortening reading assignments or removing them altogether is harmful for students who need to build their reading stamina. If they are only reading short passages, they will not have the tools they need to read longer pieces or full-length novels.
High school and college English classes teach crucial skills, including reading comprehension and media literacy. Students gain these traits by reading and discussing the content in class, which allows them to form their own understanding of the text and learn from their classmates’ responses.
According to Horowitch, “Books can cultivate a sophisticated form of empathy. Yet such benefits require staying with a character through their journey; they cannot be approximated by reading a five- or even 30-page excerpt.”
Negative effects of changing teaching methods echo throughout high schools and into higher education institutions, including Washington College.
Associate Professor of English and Chair of the English department Dr. Courtney E. Rydel has noticed a change in the length of readings assigned between her undergraduate days and the current classes she teaches.
“The length of reading assignments that I was assigned to do as an undergrad and did [were] considerably longer and more challenging than what I’m able to assign students here,” Dr. Rydel said. “I work very hard at making sure that what I’m assigning students is a length and a type of reading that they’re likely to read.”
While Dr. Rydel was used to reading 45 pages or more per class, changes in student readership have caused her to shorten assignments to 30 pages or less.
According to Slate, “In the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch…students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.”
As professors continue to adjust reading lengths in response to students’ decreased reading stamina, they may notice students misunderstanding the readings or missing key pieces of context, which takes away from the reading experience. If they do not understand the reading in full, they will not be able to participate in class and understand their peers’ and their own ideas.
Associate Chair of English and Associate Professor of English Dr. Elizabeth O’Connor has also noticed this decline, specifically among her younger students.
“Since COVID, I have seen a marked uptick in students not doing the reading and not even attempting to do the reading, and, in some cases, especially in lower-level classes that they are taking for distribution, not even being mildly apologetic for not doing the reading,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Several students this semester in my English 101 class have expressed, ‘Why should I be expected to read something before class?’ They went through 12 years of English and they’ve never had to do that before.”
However, this decline cannot be placed solely on the students; changes in literacy education and grading policies in response to standardized tests and the COVID-19 pandemic also led to this phenomenon.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, “a generation of students have been harmed by problematic reading-instruction strategies used in many elementary schools. Rather than learning the building blocks of words through phonics, they were taught to rely on context clues — an approach not backed by research.”
This switch in teaching methods means students are not learning to read specific words phonetically; instead, they are taught to rely on other aspects of the sentence if they encounter a word they do not understand. But how are students supposed to understand the rest of the sentence if they are learning to focus on context clues instead of phonics?
“No one should be shaming students for the circumstances they are in. The students are not the problem; the wicked circumstances of the pandemic combined with a host of institutional failures are the problem,” cinema and media studies professor Nicholaus Gutierrez said in an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have also played a role in students’ ability to read and comprehend assignments and information. Schools across the country switched to online classes, which affected how students received information and interacted with their peers and teachers.
“I do think that students have had more difficulty now than in the past engaging with what might be perceived as literary texts and the kind of close-reading skills…that used to be seen as the kind of stuff that students would start learning in fourth, fifth grade, definitely through middle school,” Dr. O’Connor said.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, grading practices also shifted in response to the pandemic.
“As part of that movement, some set minimum grades at 50 percent instead of zero and removed penalties for late work, among other shifts. The idea was to provide a safety net for struggling students who would benefit from additional chances to succeed,” Beth McMurtrie wrote for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
While this switch may have been in response to declining mental health and concerns surrounding the pandemic, it also meant that students were not being held accountable for their schoolwork. Many relied on online tools and AI programs, such as ChatGPT, for assistance or may not have completed the assignments at all because of the lowered expectations.
When schools opened up, and professors returned to standard grading practices, students who passed by during the pandemic may have struggled to keep up.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, “critics argue that such an approach can backfire, because, if done poorly, it conveys to students that deadlines, homework, and effort don’t matter.”
After high school, college presents students with a newfound independence in which they must create their own schedule, set their own boundaries and expectations, and keep up with their schoolwork. For a new generation of students impacted by the pandemic, however, these tasks may be difficult.
“I do think it’s important to try to readjust, to try to meet students, and try to make things engaging for students, but, at the same time, also [make] it clear that there are certain expectations that need to be achieved,” Dr. O’Connor said.
Reading outside of the classroom has also decreased in recent years. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, only 17% of 13-year-olds said they read in their free time in 2020. If they are not reading in the classroom and they are not reading at home, chances are, they are not reading at all.
Along with the pandemic and educational shifts, students may also find more ways to fill their time, such as scrolling on social media or watching movies and television shows with friends. Reading is not their first priority or go-to activity.
“The rise of social media, and that students are getting social media at an earlier and earlier age, makes it more difficult for them to concentrate and focus on things that are not as interesting [or] interactive,” Dr. O’Connor said.
However, as Horowitch and Dr. Rydel argue, reading can provide students with opportunities to understand others’ experiences and create their own worlds that they may not be able to do with other forms of media or entertainment.
“When you read a book, you are in such a position of power and control because you can decide how you imagine it and how you interpret it in a way that you can’t with a film or a television show in the same way,” Dr. Rydel said. “You have such power. To be a reader is to be a person with incredible power that nobody can take away from you, and literacy is power in the world in very real, practical ways.”
Photo by Olivia Long.
Photo Caption: Declines in readerships have affected teaching methods in colleges.