re: Many Ivy League freshmen have never read a book

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I mean, of course. I didn't look at this title and think they were necessarily pointing out an "Ivy League issue" inasmuch as thinking it was highlighting them (the supposed elite of the elite) to point out how bad this issue really is across the board. If it's that bad at THESE SCHOOLS...

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In a vacuum, I agree with you. I dropped in that bit in response to the first line of the OP:

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They're not sending their best…

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This is so far removed from my experiences while growing up. Sure, some of the assigned books were not to my liking. But I also discovered great books that I may not have read otherwise. And I was a voracious reader. Read every book in our house and always got the max amount of books allowed from the library. I can't imagine having never read a whole book, even for pleasure.

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i'll admit, the only books I read all the way through for school were The Great Gatsby,Catcher in the rye and freakenstein

freakenstein and Catcher were so gay that it turned me off of any white women's recommendation so I went to sparknotes

I might have gotten Cs but i graduated

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The complete irony of this post...

In a discussion with a friend, the topic of the Dept of Education came up. He seemed shocked when I wasn't necessarily opposed with the dissolution of that dept. "

" We absolutely need the Dept of education"

Me: "why?".

Him " because ...we do"

My point was, of course education is needed but the top down /political driven education system we have currently in place - spewing from DC isn't working. It's an expensive progressive duplication of the states work We spend more than any one but Luxembourg ? But rank near 30th. We have spent so much in resources to make every outcome equal and feel good that we have failed to give kids opportunities for confidence

I read a book every couple weeks

Much better for your brain than playing candy crush or the tiktoks

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Catcher in the rye

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Hated this book although my favorite books in High School were Brave New World and Martian Chronicles.

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For the love of God find stories that are interesting and instill desire in children to want to read.

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That’s the problem by forcing kids to read specific books at first. Start them out with a wide range of selections to hopefully instill a love of reading.

In school reading entire books can put you at a major risk of falling behind. You can spend weeks reading a book of literature and if you interpret the writings wrong on your book report you make a worse grade than someone who didn't read the book and used cliff notes. Also, you may read entire chapters and miss what the pop quiz might ask because you don't remember it. However, all of the important material would be in the cliff notes anyway.

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It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how.

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It is the same as reading something short. You just keep going.

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In school reading entire books can put you at a major risk of falling behind. You can spend weeks reading a book of literature and if you interpret the writings wrong on your book report you make a worse grade than someone who didn't read the book and used cliff notes. Also, you may read entire chapters and miss what the pop quiz might ask because you don't remember it. However, all of the important material would be in the cliff notes anyway.

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Then be better as teachers/educators. Teachers should know what cliffnotes/spark notes of the books they assign are saying and not reward kids that are obviously leaning in these as a crutch.

As for pop quizzes, don’t make them about minute, unimportant details but rather the themes and motifs of the chapters that accurately judge children’s abilities to comprehend the story.