Thank you for linking to https://www.chronicle.com/article/we-asked-for-it. It matches with my experiences of modern universities very well. There's been some atrocious leftist behavior by institutions and professors that helps *no one*, and this is motivating funding loss, and various good things are going to be hit by this if it happens. I'm glad people on the institution side are talking about it at all.
(Personal anecdata: I have attended a genetics class at a "Public Ivy" which told me that "Skin color is not associated with other aspects of a person's appearance", when anyone's eyes can tell them that hair and eye color have various correlations with skin tone. I've also attended a botany class there where the professor brought in guest speakers who discussed quantum woo and heart EM fields and shared personal anecdotes about experiencing miracles.)
Parentification sounds like the opposite end of the spectrum to infantilisation. Until we can find a good balance, it sounds like the much lesser evil?
Theory of one young (early 20's) person regarding books:
Young people do not "care" about education anymore, and why should they?
There were always people in school who didn't want to be there, but they were probably scolded a lot harder about it than they are now.
Then school and especially university used to be *the* place to go if you're naturally interested in academics, and thirsty for knowledge. There probably used to be many interested kids like this in every class, that teachers loved to teach. Now, these kids are getting their knowledge thirst more than satiated by the internet, and they sleep through classes and gamify them to do the minimum that whatever grade they want requires. Because why shouldn't they? Instead of learning in a harsh and stressful environment where you're tired, you learn at your own pace online.
People are just acting in their rational self interest.
Perspective of a current student at an elite college (relatively biased in its own way): in high school I used to read a book a day, so the capacity is there (and most of my friends also read books for pleasure or education reasonably frequently).
But readings do fall to the wayside pretty often, for reasons split between: (a) I spend 70 hours a week working and they're pretty low priority compared to a lot of other tasks (I'm on the upper end here but I expect this is true for a lot of other people) and (b) I can't get through a full two pages of political philosophy without homicidal rage at the author's inability to compose a coherent sentence (ok this is a personal gripe).
At any rate I'm pretty sure some of my professors have been complaining about students not having enough attention span for the readings for 40 years, and I expect growing workload/students spending more time on things outside of school accounts for some of the difference. I think the latter part of the Atlantic article is right on the money:
> Some experts I spoke with attributed the decline of book reading to a shift in values rather than in skill sets. Students can still read books, they argue—they’re just choosing not to.
> The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take. A 2023 survey of Harvard seniors found that they spend almost as much time on jobs and extracurriculars as they do on academics. And thanks to years of grade inflation (in a recent report, 79 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range), college kids can get by without doing all of their assigned work.
I'd be cautious about generalizing this to an inability to read long books at all, or god forbid something about Gen Z's attention span.
Interesting story. I think art affects us more than we like to think it does. I think there's also a theme about enjoying art even if it doesn't fit your preconceptions or values; the protagonist is worried about his problematic faves, whereas the author (Finnes) doesn't see the problem; if he likes her work, great. I think midcentury novels tended to be set in the real thing rather than fantasy knockoffs--that's a modern speculative fiction conceit--but it didn't bother me too much.
“You have no idea of my pains or pleasures, young man. I’d thank you to stop assuming.” Perfect.
Is he really forgetting the novels, or is his time travel creating new Finnes novels de novo? I thought the second, and it's kind of a neat thought--what if Howard or Lovecraft (or John Kennedy Toole) hadn't died young? Do those unwritten works exist somewhere, and is there some sorcery that would produce them?
No Mary Renault, but I ironically related to it as a cishet guy who read way too much second-wave feminist stuff in his adolescence and developed a bunch of nasty complexes.
Given the level of fraud discovered the last few years in life sciences, I no longer believe in explanations that bad science is over there in some other school or department.
The replication crisis has indeed hit "proper" subjects like medicine. Some of them have learnt from this. Education schools, as opposed to cognitive psychologists, still have a long way to go. I guess the world feels more comfortable if you can just read about Growth Mindset again and again?
Thank you for linking to https://www.chronicle.com/article/we-asked-for-it. It matches with my experiences of modern universities very well. There's been some atrocious leftist behavior by institutions and professors that helps *no one*, and this is motivating funding loss, and various good things are going to be hit by this if it happens. I'm glad people on the institution side are talking about it at all.
(Personal anecdata: I have attended a genetics class at a "Public Ivy" which told me that "Skin color is not associated with other aspects of a person's appearance", when anyone's eyes can tell them that hair and eye color have various correlations with skin tone. I've also attended a botany class there where the professor brought in guest speakers who discussed quantum woo and heart EM fields and shared personal anecdotes about experiencing miracles.)
Parentification sounds like the opposite end of the spectrum to infantilisation. Until we can find a good balance, it sounds like the much lesser evil?
Theory of one young (early 20's) person regarding books:
Young people do not "care" about education anymore, and why should they?
There were always people in school who didn't want to be there, but they were probably scolded a lot harder about it than they are now.
Then school and especially university used to be *the* place to go if you're naturally interested in academics, and thirsty for knowledge. There probably used to be many interested kids like this in every class, that teachers loved to teach. Now, these kids are getting their knowledge thirst more than satiated by the internet, and they sleep through classes and gamify them to do the minimum that whatever grade they want requires. Because why shouldn't they? Instead of learning in a harsh and stressful environment where you're tired, you learn at your own pace online.
People are just acting in their rational self interest.
Perspective of a current student at an elite college (relatively biased in its own way): in high school I used to read a book a day, so the capacity is there (and most of my friends also read books for pleasure or education reasonably frequently).
But readings do fall to the wayside pretty often, for reasons split between: (a) I spend 70 hours a week working and they're pretty low priority compared to a lot of other tasks (I'm on the upper end here but I expect this is true for a lot of other people) and (b) I can't get through a full two pages of political philosophy without homicidal rage at the author's inability to compose a coherent sentence (ok this is a personal gripe).
At any rate I'm pretty sure some of my professors have been complaining about students not having enough attention span for the readings for 40 years, and I expect growing workload/students spending more time on things outside of school accounts for some of the difference. I think the latter part of the Atlantic article is right on the money:
> Some experts I spoke with attributed the decline of book reading to a shift in values rather than in skill sets. Students can still read books, they argue—they’re just choosing not to.
> The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take. A 2023 survey of Harvard seniors found that they spend almost as much time on jobs and extracurriculars as they do on academics. And thanks to years of grade inflation (in a recent report, 79 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range), college kids can get by without doing all of their assigned work.
I'd be cautious about generalizing this to an inability to read long books at all, or god forbid something about Gen Z's attention span.
Fwiw I also loved Mary Renault's work as a middle schooler and am straight/mostly cis
Interesting story. I think art affects us more than we like to think it does. I think there's also a theme about enjoying art even if it doesn't fit your preconceptions or values; the protagonist is worried about his problematic faves, whereas the author (Finnes) doesn't see the problem; if he likes her work, great. I think midcentury novels tended to be set in the real thing rather than fantasy knockoffs--that's a modern speculative fiction conceit--but it didn't bother me too much.
“You have no idea of my pains or pleasures, young man. I’d thank you to stop assuming.” Perfect.
Is he really forgetting the novels, or is his time travel creating new Finnes novels de novo? I thought the second, and it's kind of a neat thought--what if Howard or Lovecraft (or John Kennedy Toole) hadn't died young? Do those unwritten works exist somewhere, and is there some sorcery that would produce them?
No Mary Renault, but I ironically related to it as a cishet guy who read way too much second-wave feminist stuff in his adolescence and developed a bunch of nasty complexes.
I think the Daoism link goes to the wrong post.
The "bad at reading books" link is broken
Your link to the article in The Atlantic is broken.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
Gosh, the stories of encounters with Chinese psychiatrists have left me bummed out!
Given the level of fraud discovered the last few years in life sciences, I no longer believe in explanations that bad science is over there in some other school or department.
The replication crisis has indeed hit "proper" subjects like medicine. Some of them have learnt from this. Education schools, as opposed to cognitive psychologists, still have a long way to go. I guess the world feels more comfortable if you can just read about Growth Mindset again and again?