Mark Bauerlein’s chapter, “The New Bibliophobes” of The Dumbest Generation has really gotten me thinking about my own reading habits and how they’ve changed from my high school years to my current college years. When I was in high school I was one of those 77% of students who spent three hours or less per week on “personal reading”. I also was most weeks probably not included in the 2% of students who exceeded 10 hours when it came to “Reading/studying for a class”. Looking back on high school, I took difficult classes; however, I figured out what I needed to do to get good grades and that’s all I did. I rarely read for pleasure, studied extra for the sake of learning, or pushed myself because at my high school I simply did not need to. The only pleasure reading I can recall was during those beautiful Easter vacations that I spent on the beach in Florida. Yes, I was a beach reader and since I grew up in a similar climate to Meadville, I guess it caused my pleasure reading to struggle.
In school, I pretty much had the system figured out, UNTIL I CAME TO ALLEGHENY!! I quickly learned that it is possible to enjoy learning and a lot of learning comes from those things my high school teachers were trying to get me to read—BOOKS! Alright, so before people start to think that I still do not read, that is untrue! I have figured out that I would have made my college transition so much easier if I would have read in high school. Since coming to college I have read all of my books and articles for my class (or at least skimmed them). While I read books for classes, I still have to be honest in admitting that I do not read for fun. I simply do not have enough time. For me, I feel as though there is always homework that can be done and with that lingering over my head I can’t just sit down and read one of my “beach reads” while thinking about how much other reading I have to do. Thus when I take breaks from my studies I have to go outside that “reading-medium”. I think that with the heavy workloads of college students it is just simply too difficult to find a large amount of time for pleasure reading, maybe that is not the case for everyone but I guess it would be my goal to simply start pleasure reading and pleasure learning through books once my formal education slows down. Does anyone have opinions on this type of area? Do you think there is plenty of time at Allegheny College for pleasure reading or is our campus somewhere that it is difficult to find that time?
Side Note: “Kids read Harry Potter not because they like reading, but because other kids read it”. Alright, I withheld following the crowd into reading any of the infamous Harry Potter series until my professor assigned it as part of my Children’s Literature course reading. So while it might be the majority that kids read certain things simply because other kids are doing it—it is not entirely true. Also, I would like to pose the question: Is it really a bad thing if kids read books only because other kids are doing it? I’d like to think that this would be an example of fantastic peer pressure!! 
Finally, I would just briefly like to comment on Bauerlein’s use of statistics. I think it is great to have these statistics that support each of the points made in the book; however, sometimes it gets difficult to follow exactly what the point is with all the statistics. Does anyone else feel the book could be seen as a little heavy on the statistics?
Comments (1)
I'm in full agreement with you. I absolutely love reading for pleasure, and to a large extent it's how I spend my summer and winter vacations, at least outside of hanging out with friends and money-earning and all that capitalist stuff. But when I'm at Allegheny, I never have time to sit down and enjoy a book purely for its own purpose. In addition to reading novels for pleasure, I also love reading reprints of vintage comic books from the 50s and 60s, particularly the original Amazing Spider-man series. I don't even have the time for that, though. Not even a *pretentious shudder* comic book.
When I do have time (hah!) for leisure activities, it almost always comes down to melting my brain (in the common lingo, playing video games) or busting out my guitar and/or harmonica. Rarely does picking up anything on my personal reading list sound appealing after 200+ pages of reading for class.
Posted by Dan | April 7, 2009 10:22 AM
Posted on April 7, 2009 10:22