Why College Kids Can't Read

The title of a recent article in Atlantic magazine caught my eye. It reads, “the elite college students who can't read books to read a book in college it helps to have read a book in high school.” In the article, Rose Horowitch writes that many students no longer arrive at college, even at highly selective elite colleges, prepared to read books. In her research she found that it's not that students don't want to do the reading. It's that they don't know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to. She writes that in 1976 about 40% of high school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5% who hadn't read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped. It's reasonable to assume that one reason for the decline in reading and reading aptitude is the smartphone. One maxim that I heard years ago is this, readers are leaders and leaders are readers. Parents, we encourage you to get your kids to put down the phones and pick up a book.