Comments on: Summer reading

By: Opie

Opie — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:46:39 +0000

Ah…. Summer reading. Many of my freshman will arrive next fall having read little if anything over the summer. The reasons will vary, the results will not. For many of these students reading borders on the line of some form of torcher. The reading level of many children so low they can barely decode the words let alone comprehend at grade level. Why are they promoted you ask? Among several, simple; Politics!! The very people who claim to be anti-social promotion are at the mercy of local politics. Unfortunately a disproportionately large number of these students are infact minority. If they are withheld from promotion “community leaders” demand to know why? Quickly they will assert that the reasons have nothing to do with education level. Therefore, the schools choose the lesser of two evils hoping students will catch-up. They err on the side of social promotion. Will any of them admit to this? Of course not, it is not politically expedient. Oh what a tangled web we weave. Dale Carnegie said decades ago: I paraphrase, people have two agendas; the one they tell you and the real one. Sadly the biggest losers in this educational quagmire are the students. Imagine if we allowed children to learn swimming by throwing them in the deep end regardless of their level of skill. A ludricrous idea of course, yet that is in essence what people of many concerned camps in reality do to children pertaining to reading and education. Hopefully soon we will put children and not politics first!!

By: NDC

NDC — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 22:43:15 +0000

Check this for non-fiction:

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/ap/students/english/ap-english-0607.pdf

Check AP English Language representative authors.

By: Ragnarok

Ragnarok — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:24:13 +0000

Maybe “Red Sky at Morning”? I read it in college, and it seemed to speak to many of my friends as well.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:42:43 +0000

Heh, The Last of the Mohicans made the list. Mark Twain must be spinning in his grave.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:33:56 +0000

Since not all life is lived in the reading chair, some knowledge of the real world can be useful.
So, I would add
“This Kind of War”, Fehrenbach,
and,
“War; Ends and Means”, Seabury and Codevilla.

By: Malcolm Kirkpatrick

Malcolm Kirkpatrick — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:54:44 +0000

Why is this list so weighted with fiction and poetry? Where are classic non-fiction works? Some scientists and historians write with an elegance and precision which students would do well to model.

Higher education is a ponzi scheme anyway. You want to learn US Diplomatic Histroy or 18th Century French Literature (in translaton)? Read a book; you don’t need to kiss some professor’s

toes.

By: Dan Winters

Dan Winters — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:20:28 +0000

I’m wondering why these lists are so skimpy on Non-Fiction?

By: Casting Out Nines / 10 books that changed my life

Casting Out Nines / 10 books that changed my life — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:23:36 +0000

[...] also just so happened to run across this post about ten life-changing books and a list (via Joanne Jacobs) of 101 great books that college-bound students should read over the summer (I like the level of [...]

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:13:11 +0000

I suspect the nursing scene was tossed in to slip one past the censors. Any of my aunts [and I had a flock of them] would have had that guy nursing a broomstick.

By: NDC

NDC — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:36:32 +0000

I’m with you, Larry. I think most of the works on the list have to be actively taught these days, not just assigned and read. But I still think there’s a value in doing it.

I’m not prepared to make a case that literature (or history) is more important than learning science to people actually learning what’s available to be learned, but I think in the olden days, a high school graduate actually has a shot at mastering a well-defined, relatively broad body of knowledge, and today I don’t think they do.

We haven’t exchanged Latin and seemingly esoteric grammar for more people mastering atomic physics; we’ve created a system that basically doesn’t allow you to assume that a high school graduate actually knows any particular thing.

I might take AP English and read a lot of what’s on the list, or I might take ESOL Language Arts and barely pass my exams for graduation. Either way, I’d be likely to get the same diploma. You might take two types of AP Physics, or you might take Ecology and Oceanography to satisfy your science requirements. Having a high school diploma manages to not mean anything and yet be elusive for an “unacceptably” large segment of public school kids anyway.

I happen to believe that dropping requirements in the name of immediate utility is part of what got us where we are today, so I’m extra suspicious of the “does anyone really need to know this” kind of discussion.

I claim you need to teach literature: a common body of works recognized for their significance that people read to create a sense of shared culture. I’m open to including works not on this list, but it still needs to a well-known and pretty-close-to-universal list.

About the non-fiction suggestion, I agree that non-fiction is as valuable as fiction certainly. I suspect you might be able to find a College Board list of works connected somehow to the AP English Language course that might be what you’d be looking for. The AP English Language class tends to incorporate more non-fiction.