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Elite Colleges Shocked to Discover Students 'Don't Know How' to Read Books

Elite Colleges Shocked to Discover Students 'Don't Know How' to Read Books: 'My Jaw Dropped' by Lindsay Kornick at Fox News

Oct 10, 2024

"Several university professors expressed concerns to The Atlantic about students who come to college unable to read full-length books. Assistant editor Rose Horowitch spoke to several teachers from elite schools like Columbia, Georgetown and Stanford, who each described the phenomenon of students being overwhelmed by the prospect of reading entire books. Columbia University humanities professor Nicholas Dames described feeling "bewildered" when a first-year student told him that she had never been required to read a full book at her public high school."

Elite Colleges Shocked to Discover Students 'Don't Know How' to Read Books: 'My Jaw Dropped' by Lindsay Kornick at Fox News. Several university professors expressed concerns to The Atlantic about students who come to college unable to read full-length books. Assistant editor Rose Horowitch spoke to several teachers from elite schools like Columbia, Georgetown and Stanford, who each described the phenomenon of students being overwhelmed by the prospect of reading entire books. Columbia University humanities professor Nicholas Dames described feeling "bewildered" when a first-year student told him that she had never been required to read a full book at her public high school. Read

 

Why Study History? by Andrew J. Zwerneman at Cana Academy. Every liberal art or science frees our students to see what they could not otherwise see. Hence, the meaning of a liberal education: an education to freedom. A liberally educated person is free from ignorance and deficient modes of thought. He is free to enter the wider world that genuine learning opens up to him. By the liberal disciplines, one sees each thing for what it is and the greater order in which it has its place. History was not always included in a liberal education. Aristotle, the father of liberal education, never worked up history as either an art or a science. Why, then, should we include history within a liberal course of studies? Read

 

Eleonore Stump on ‘Beauty as a Road to God’ by Dr. Christopher Kaczor at Word on Fire. Eleonore Stump, in her essay “Beauty as a Road to God,” notes, “Very few people, maybe hardly any people, come to God because they are convinced by a proof. As far as I can see, people come to God because of something else entirely, not because of some convincing argument for God’s existence but rather because of some desire or yearning in them.” This seems right. For every Edward Feser or C.S. Lewis who comes to belief in God through philosophical argument, there are thousands of people whose faith in God is kindled by the beauty of holding a sleeping child. Read

 

In Too Many Catholic Schools, Faith Has Become Like ‘Frosting on a Secular Cake’ by Michael J. Naughton at America Press. Like yeast in a loaf, faith, in a genuinely Catholic education, interacts with all other disciplines, such as the humanities, sciences, social sciences and the professions. Faith does not replace disciplines or transform them into itself; rather, when faith encounters reason, it reveals and orders reason’s deeper realities of truth and goodness. Like yeast, faith expands throughout the whole educational enterprise because there are no limits to its borders. Faith, not a mere emotion but a divine illumination, is the theological virtue that expands the mind and soul, enabling us to see more deeply and more broadly. Read

 

Two Notable Education Cases the Supreme Court Declined to Take Up This Term by Mark Walsh at EducationWeek. As the justices opened their new term Oct. 7, they turned away hundreds of petitions for review that had piled up over their summer recess. The court has important cases of interest to educators on its docket, including about transgender rights and the federal E-rate program for schools. And they may yet take up other cases on gender identity in schools and state aid to religion. But here are the two notable cases they declined. Read

 

Courts Are Letting Social-Media Platforms Get Away with Manipulating Children by Clare Morell & Adam Candeub at National Review. Earlier this month, Judge Robert Shelby of the U.S. District Court of Utah declared unconstitutional the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act, which the state legislature passed this spring. We believe this is an act of judicial activism that is based on flawed reasoning, legally and practically…Social media have conducted a radical experiment on our kids. Algorithms and addictive design features determine what our kids see and learn, with no parental involvement or oversight. The result has been major spikes in the rates of teen anxiety, depression, suicide, and self-harm. Read

 

AI Ushers In A New Era For Education & Learning Companies by Allison Salisbury at Forbes. Higher education was born, in places like Oxford and Cambridge, as a tutorial system. But over the centuries, higher education moved further and further away from that model through waves of expansion and democratization—reaching a point where the 500-person lecture hall came to be synonymous with college…But now, with AI we can see the outlines of a world where it's actually possible to have hyper-personalized education, learning and career development at scale. Read

 

Throwback Thursday

 

Educating Maria by Matthew Walz at Memoria Press on June 12, 2021. Classical education turns out to be very customizable—to local communities, to individual families, and even to individuals with varying cognitive abilities. Indeed, our experience with Maria has helped us see just how “participate-able” classical education is....Classical education now strikes my wife and me as much more like a common good than a private one, i.e., as a good that is in nowise diminished when shared and that becomes more fully itself when shared diversely by an ever-expanding variety of people, including those with special needs. Read

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