Summer Reading
This year the stack was shorter than in some years past: books for our summer reading program. As I read them (well, most of them), I began ruminating about why we do this. It seems like a good idea. Other schools do it. These are reasons I never would have accepted from my daughters in their teenage years.
At “the meeting” to pick the book, the issue of why came up again (as it does every year). So, why do we do it? Good reasons, that’s why. College students, and prospects, read too little, read too much on computer screens, and read too little fiction. Then they come to college, and they continue to read too little from their texts (nearly all of which are “non-fiction” let’s say). We’ll fix that by making them read more.
As we go around the table discussing the pro and con, good and bad, interesting and dull points of our books, we always spend more time on why we do this than on picking the book. It’s been an evolution for us – from some critically important point we want to make with our first year students, to our desire to expand their cultural literacy, to making them think. It’s a reasonable strategy. We pick a book (fiction) that has not been made into a movie (no shortcuts, director’s cut, new interpretation), that makes us think and, we hope, our students, too. But, we’ve been vaguely unsettled about this for a couple of years. Most students like the books we make them read, they respond well enough in small group discussions, and we link the book to our start-up activities each year. Good enough but not good enough.
A summer book is an opportunity to create a different kind of community, at least on a campus small enough get the word out and survive a little jaded carping. We create community with new students, older students, faculty and staff through this one book. It’s an ephemeral community (except students talk about the book they loved or hated for years), a shared experience. For our newest students, it’s a first exposure to what we do: read, think, consider the meaning of ideas and interpret actions. For the remainder of our community, it’s a renewal of our commitment to learning and living together.
And, this summer you should read Stuart Onan’s “Last Night at the Lobster.” It will improve your vision.
Dick Pratt is Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
At “the meeting” to pick the book, the issue of why came up again (as it does every year). So, why do we do it? Good reasons, that’s why. College students, and prospects, read too little, read too much on computer screens, and read too little fiction. Then they come to college, and they continue to read too little from their texts (nearly all of which are “non-fiction” let’s say). We’ll fix that by making them read more.
As we go around the table discussing the pro and con, good and bad, interesting and dull points of our books, we always spend more time on why we do this than on picking the book. It’s been an evolution for us – from some critically important point we want to make with our first year students, to our desire to expand their cultural literacy, to making them think. It’s a reasonable strategy. We pick a book (fiction) that has not been made into a movie (no shortcuts, director’s cut, new interpretation), that makes us think and, we hope, our students, too. But, we’ve been vaguely unsettled about this for a couple of years. Most students like the books we make them read, they respond well enough in small group discussions, and we link the book to our start-up activities each year. Good enough but not good enough.
A summer book is an opportunity to create a different kind of community, at least on a campus small enough get the word out and survive a little jaded carping. We create community with new students, older students, faculty and staff through this one book. It’s an ephemeral community (except students talk about the book they loved or hated for years), a shared experience. For our newest students, it’s a first exposure to what we do: read, think, consider the meaning of ideas and interpret actions. For the remainder of our community, it’s a renewal of our commitment to learning and living together.
And, this summer you should read Stuart Onan’s “Last Night at the Lobster.” It will improve your vision.
Dick Pratt is Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
Labels: summer reading
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