Shallow Pre-College Reading Assignments Pave Way for Social Justice Agenda
15th February 2016
More than 350 colleges assigned a book to their freshmen last summer. That is, each college picked one book as a common reading. That book was sent on a large mission. Its first job was to create community among the students by giving them something beyond social networking as a shared experience. The book is also meant to introduce pre-freshmen to college-level reading. Behind this lurks a third hope: engaging the half-hearted so they don’t drop out.
The books college pick, however, often betray these purposes. That’s because the common readings are dull and predictable. When I wrote the National Association of Scholars’ new report, Beach Books: 2014-2016: What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class?, I found that the typical assignment is a recent memoir with a simple story told in an even simpler style. This year’s most assigned book was Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates (2010). It tells how Moore, a poor black kid on the streets of crime-ridden Baltimore, overcame the odds to become a Rhodes Scholar, a decorated army officer, and a White House Fellow. He discovers a namesake in Baltimore who instead became a crack dealer and convicted murderer. Moore challenges the reader to do something for all the Wes Moores who weren’t as fortunate as he.