Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On Beach Books 20160305

Now we kickoff the weekend with a report on required reading for College Freshman. If we dont have enough people go out and find some. [inaudible conversations] welcome to the National Association of scholars. I am peter wyatt wood, president of the National Association of scholars. In 2009, a young man heading on vacation in mexico picked up and unusually heavy book for his beach reading, and 800 page tome of the life of an 18thcentury immigrant. 50 pages or so into the book the story took possession of the 29yearold. Would emerge from his reading of Alexander Hamilton is now the hottest ticket on broadway, the hiphop musical hamilton. Broadways play is widely noted for many things including its exact fidelity to historical facts. Each bowl must not be Light Reading and the right beach book can kick off a lot of things. As it happens one of the top five most common readings for College Freshman last year was also a book about the obstacles overcome by an immigrant, the considerably shorter and ricans journey which offers a harrowing account of the 16yearold under an boyd, drug users and thief who makes his way through mexico across the texas border. The book contrasts on several points, one is that henry k. s journey is written at a level appropriate for fifth graders by an independent rating system. Welcome to the launch of the National Association of scholars new edition of beach books. This is book designed by colleges and universities to Incoming College classes in the summer of 201415. We have a splendid lineup of speakers to break the champagne bottle over the bow of beach books number 5. We will hear from executive director Ashley Thorne who first conceived of studying, and reading programs as a way to illuminate what colleges really value. The first four reports established the subject and something professors and the general public take seriously. We will also hear from the director of communications, david randall, who wrote this report. He is phd from rutgers in history, joins the National Association of scholars october 1st and his first assignment was to synthesize our collection of data on these common breeding programs into a coherent analysis. He did astonishingly good work in the last few months. We will have time later on for questions and conversation, but our keynote speaker, Mark Bauerlein, former director of research and analysis at the National Endowment for the arts, and Senior Editor at first thing. Let me add how grateful i am the first things is hosting the launch of this report, first things is one of the truce form walls in our society against the regions seas of mediocrity, that threaten to drown our public culture. Follow these books that shape the minds of the coming generation is clearly a matter of urgent concern and it is to the National Association of scholars. But Mark Bauerlein can explain that much better than i. [applause] thank you. Thank you all for coming here. It is not happy news to speak about Higher Education, about some of the reading choices that are made by colleges every year. What i will do here it is lay out some of the background about why Colleges Even have these programs at all. And to give a little bit of sympathy for the problems they are facing when they do assigned these books and what they hope these programs which can run all year long, they have incoming students read it, spend a few weeks on organized programs, debates, the courses that are oriented towards the boat, they have the author, very important to have the honor to attend and speak so it is a long process, not just the assignment of a book for the mall to read over the summer. They wanted to be an extended experience. They want them to spend some time with this book. They graduate from high school. They are admitted to this institution, might pile on this extra reading. Lasting you want to do is read books over the summer, we will see that is one of the shoes. Briefly, there really are i choose three major problem this schools face today with their incoming students. This actually is not so much the hyper selective institutions but the other is that actually it affects selected institutions as well. One is they read one book. This is something that doesnt exist otherwise. There is no common reading now either in American Life, in general, or in her who the school curriculum. I ask students in a class if i refer to a book, i teach American Literature, huckleberry finn, two or three out of the 20 students in class have read it, the great gaps the, the most popular ones these days for High School Reading of to kill a mockingbird, probably the most popular novel that is chosen in high school. But only 20 of the kids, there is a report under this from a few years ago. This is a unique condition in American Life for 150 years in schools and out of schools the bible was the book everybody knew. The bible was everywhere. It was in political discourse, it was in School Reading books, the american primer, everyone read the bible. If you did not actively reading you heard it redding church, at the dinner table, that was the book that was common to everyone. I have my American Literature students all read portions of genesis and leviticus which is very important at the time of the founding, and the sermon on the mount. President obama in his first inaugural used the phrase put away childish things. That is not the sermon on the mount. That is much later. Okay. I am getting simple. I dont want to say second. All right. Over the 20th century, Public Schools certainly grew more secular, we did have for a few decades a fairly common core curriculum in eleventh or twelfth grade, some times earlier grades where you did have a set of american works that most students did read, short stories, the Scarlet Letter by hawthorne, walt whitman, anderson, huckleberry finn, great gatsby, hemingway, a fairly solid, 50s, 60s and 70s, multiculturalism came along and killed that tradition, broken up and the promise of multiculturalism was we would have those works being read but we would have not much richer set of traditions, more literature by women and minorities. Authors. This would actually build Greater Knowledge and we would have an africanamerican to go along with other conditions. That isnt what happened. What happened was instead of having a bigger tradition should everyone would read portions of, it became all over the place. Teachers are largely allowed to select for school districts, select their own works. Common core does not have a required reading list as it has recommended reading list that is largely ignored in the implementation of common core. We dont want to tell people what to read. That sounds like a prescription medicine. We dont want to get to that because you start excluding things, telling people what to do indeed is too narrow and so on, so it leaves us with a set of kids who havent read a common book and the problem is if people havent if they dont have some cultural things in common you cant build a culture out of them. The schools in the report talk about community. And they are right, one of the ways in which you have a community is people have read the same things. They have the same culture background. This is one thing, one problem, lack of any common reading that the program tries to address. 2, students dont like to read. They dont read very much on their own. Not just they dont have a common reading assignment in school or on their own, they might want to talk about harry potter. That is one thing you can mention in class that most of the kids know but at this point they may have just seen the movies. We are pretty far beyond the publication in their lives at this point, but they dont read very much on their own. I will give some numbers on this, this 2014 American Freshmen survey, very large survey project, at ucla, back to the mid 60s. The range for students to coming to college, a frisky students, four year college students, not two year college, vocational, these four year baccalaureate institutions, the rate of reading for pleasure, how often in a week to you read for pleasure, how many hours do you log, that is the question. This is the largest, 31 answered none. Nearly 1third of them, and never read for pleasure. Less than one hour. Zero minutes to 1hour, 24 . 1 to two hours a week, 22 . Three quarters of the students reading is a negligible activity. At best. They just dont read many books on their own at all. Assigning common reading, you are entering a world in which you have to read books. College is going to ramp up the reading requirement on your own, you are not going to see that feature every day who is going to go through a few pages with you at a time, you have a much more adult started, youll be on your own. If you dropout the teacher doesnt care, dont even know in larger classes, there is no babysitting here, no parachute for you. If you just disappear this is letting you know, you have to accustom yourself to going through a 300 page bill, 200 page book and spending time with it, you have to emerge with it, live with this book over time. Many english teachers will take it is getting harder to assignable more than 200 pages, students just dont it doesnt go with the rhythms of their life. You can read a few pages and do this for a while and then go back, it doesnt work at the College Level so the one book program tries to get them to be more bookish. That is the intent. Some people will say they dont read because they dont have time, they are piling up so many hours of homework. This is where the American Freshmen survey comes in on homework time, this is what students report. Not how many hours of homework they are assigned, how much homework they actually do. Here is studying homework hours per week. These are four year college students, less in two hours a week, 29 , three to five hours a week, 27 , 6 to 10, 21 . 6 to 10, that is not much more than an hour a day. One hour a day, all weekend long, two hours, steady time. You get below that, less than an hour a day for 60 of the four year college. So it is not homework that is taking hallway Meeting Minutes from them. Is not making them less fat bookish but we got to get them there. Colleges are part degraded on retention. Dropouts look very bad for institutions. The accreditation issue is can come in to play. There is a lot of pressure to keep students on campus. Let me add one more factor to this, that relates somewhat to the reading hackett, you dont read on your own. You dont do that much work, you dont know very much. The Knowledge Level students coming to college with our abysmal. Abysm. Not just their reading skills which are quite low. Last years as 80 reading scores the lowest in 40 years since 1972. Act, college readiness, 46 of students taking the act, the vast majority of them are not going to college, 46 are college ready. That means they can get a b minus in a freshman english class. Most will get seat or below. The s 80 waiting test in 2005 last year the lowest scores ever. The scores have gone down every single year except two years when they were flat. This is what is happening with the s. A. T. Scores. If you look at the National Assessment of educational progress this is the nations report card, given to twelfth graders by the federal government in content areas in geography, only 20 of twelfth graders in 2010 were proficient. In u. S. History only 12 were proficient. In 6 Dirksen Senate Office Building 04 . You got very low levels coming. If i am in a class and referred to the french revolution for some reason, something about Thomas Jefferson high have to explain what that is. You can just assume the students have historical knowledge about things. This is another issue that the one book reading consults, you select a book that has a lot of accompanying knowledge going into it as well. You saw like Charles Dickenss tale of two cities, you have to know something about the french revolution which will carry over to other things. But you want to select a book that is knowledge rich, right . That is going to bring cultural literacy. That will again fill out the big gaps in their heads. That is what the one book program is ideally pointed to. Tell us if that happens. Thank you all again for coming out on a night they are predicting snow, and it is also marty drawbridge can you hear me . Great. Thank you to first things for hosting us. We did get started on this. I want to give a little background and david is going to tell about the findings. We got started in 2010 when a faculty member told me about the book his college was a signing, something called a common reading and i didnt know what this was and wanted to find out if a lot of other colleges were doing this and it turned out there were 300 colleges and universities around the country that advertising they had this one book for a College Freshman and so we put together this list for the first time, peter and i came up with subject categories to talk about what the book was focused on, the themes they focused on and looking at the trends, what was most popular in the book, give our own analysis of what this means for Higher Education more generally and also started a list of recommended titles colleges could pick from, as better books for next year end at the time, and reading programs were under prius. Everyone involved in these programs was looking for 1stop place to go to learn what books are being assigned and with the trends where. We and knowingly created something that was very useful and it has now become their go to source. It has been cited by the m l a and the national conference. Faculty members come to us when serving on committees for selecting a the book. We included every common reading we could find from stanford to Community College and in this is the only comprehensive list like this. Each year we have done a new edition and it has taken on a life of its own. During this time i focused with a lot of the people who coordinate, and reading programs, and these are faculty members and administratorss who genuinely want students to love reading and to talk with one another about the books, they are concerned with communities, as they see there is a lack of intellectual community but they get stuck in using templates, these patterns that have already been set up and are now accepted as the way these programs are run and this is what we should do. Large committees select the book by popular vote instead of having a few people who are well red shoes good books for all students, they dont assess whether students have actually read the book, they dont have a test or agreed to hold the accountable. They always try to bring the author to speak on campus which was fine but it limits them to only choosing contemporary books. A generally dont think outside the box of what colleges they are doing. One way and a s has been encouraging common reading coordinators to think outside the box is to assign older classic books, these are the underrepresented items in these lists of what is being assigned. When i say classics i am thinking in a generous way, not limiting it to greek and roman classics or a specific can but things mark was talking about, authors like dickens and twain, works that have generally stood the test of time, that are still considered to of enduring value and importance. Coordinators we talk to have given a long pushback as to why they say they cannot or dont want to assign older classic books. So i have collected these objections and answered all of them in the last section of the report, the last pages. I have 25 so far. I just thought of another couple of while i was sitting here. My hope is to say yes, it is possible to choose more difficult, challenging and better books and still accomplish the things you want to do with these programs and make the most of this opportunity. One of the objections i have heard is because this is not for a grade, if students dont like the book they just wont read it. The only hope have is to pick a book that they like. Our job is to find out what students want to read and assign it to them. In principle, a good idea to choose books the students will enjoy but in the long run, it doesnt help them because the reason people go to college instead of being home and reading the books you already know you like is to have your mind informed by people who know more then you do. Another pushback i have heard is classics are elitist. They are for the privileged. To that i say it is a privilege to get to read these books and we should give that privilege to as many people as we can. A lot of people, especially the ones who are taking trouble to go to college, we hear talk about giving more access to Higher Education and so if we really want to give people access, opening up their world to something that is truly higher. In this edition we have just essays by two individuals who agreed on these things for different reasons. One is a truce began, the creator of the great books curriculum that has been used across the country in Community College, he has shown that anyone can benefit from and enjoy reading the great books. The others linda hall, professor of english at skidmore college, refers to herself in her essay as a liberal feminist, she sees value in letting book school for a while and let them prove themselves over time before signing the mass, and reading. She also thinks the colleges are trying to accomplish too much with just one book and, in reading programs should be reevaluated. So i am grateful to have had these conversations and others through these last few years with this project and i now pass the baton to my colleague david randall, a great talent and skill, it has been gratifying to see him noticing what i had not yet noticed an share findings. [applause] thank you. I would also like to add again, the first things personally did an awful lot to make this possible end thank you to everybody else who worked with me to make this much better work actually Ashley Thorne, peter wyatt wood, it is a wonderfully better thing than everything they have done with it. I have been talking a lot about each book with everyone over the last few months. My nonstop topic of conversation and just today i had a conversation with everyone who had a common reading in 1967. He was assigned adventures of ideas in 1933, a history of intellect, intellectual history combined with the effect on mankind at history, this was considered a reasonable common reading in 1967 and now the decline and fall. A history an account of the troubles of trash, we have too much trash. You have marge, graphic memoir, a comic book written at a fourth grade level. We have an ricans journey mentioned earlier, account of an illegal immigrant, it is meant to influence current policy. In a very fine novel about video games. I would not have thought of it as a book of college. The circle is meant to make q paranoid about google and other things. It is a where the message and all that. We have problems with common reading. Something about the common reading programs which i emphasize a bit toward the problems other sorts of books they choose which are very limited and not as good as they could be. All that on route to what we can hope for. 350 colleges a year. And liberal arts colleges. A lot of colleges. It is meant to build communities for a reason. Because what they want to do with it. Communities ultimately mean i care enough about this book to read it, i care enough about it to talk about it with my friends. If i do that, i will take my College Education seriously. I will not drop out of college. It is a Student Retention Program fundamentally, unfortunate that it has to be done at a fairly lowlevel. That is what they are aiming at. That is what they want to do. It gets you to what they draw upon. It is voluntary, overwhelmingly. Even when they say it is mandatory, they expect they have to have students willing to do it. They make them simple, easy reading, students voluntarily to read them otherwise. Number 2, once you decide it is voluntary, they appeal to as many students as possible. And the common reading inc. That is why we have huge committees in charge of selecting them, university of cincinnati, 21 people doing this. These poor people read 150 books. This was meant partly because professors will think what theyre students alike. You have a chemistry professor and was chemistry students will like. A Chemistry Administration professor lowering the administration. The english professor knows what it is like. Theyre trying to get massive time across disciplines on the part of students and professorss. You want a chemistry professor. You have a book about curie sort of comparable. I am not joking. By in by everybody, and what they are tasked to do, not asked to get a good book but one that is broadly appealing. If you are not asked to get a good book you wont get one. The institutional judges thought that way. You are trying to get a recent books as well. They think students will care more if they can see the author or the subject of the vote, someone to come to a lecture in the fall, they will always go for a recent book because you cannot get William Shakespeare to visit your class no matter how hard you try. You are going to get people who are american. There is a peculiar part of the point of going to college is learning about the world, the only people you are learning about are those who are on the circuit of, and reading it is a very parochial thing. You get the recent stuff. It is supposed to be appealing so it is all memoir or biography and young person memoir, young person biography, 70 is popular nonfiction written in extremely direct lack of style. There is no variation, it is all the same sort of thing. And reach as journey, someone who went to found a Nonprofit Organization somewhere, who has overcome adversity to get to college. There are different scenarios but it is all the same. One should add to this they are less varied, not just the same homogenous source book, but the most popular books are the most recent books. Published in 2012, published this last year, these are the ones that get doubledigit selection. Win huge shoes more recent books you choose fewer books. The older the book is, the more various it is likely to be. When you are talking about intellectual diversity, there is no real narrowing by focusing on the trend. Add to all this, there are political famous. It is all skewed in the direction of progressive books and partly this isnt the Mission Statement themselves. Mission statements say we want to talk official diversity, talk about timeliness, talk about civic engagement. Many words which are not objectionable in and of themselves but are part of that archipelago, and choosing the books, themselves tend to be progressive, they dont seem to realize there are books that dont follow particular political direction. Because you are trying to get consensus, you do a lot of books on the environment because talking about the environment wont raise anybodys tackles. It is lowest common denominator progressivism. Seeing all this, not for the political point as such, the point is it restricts the universe of possible books that much more. In addition to all the other limitations you have got, you can only get books in various progressive limitations. It means you have got a very narrow range. It wouldnt be so bad if not that the entirety of being read at 350 colleges a year, it is a problem. I want to go from that, what can we hope for, what can be done better . There is decent stuff out there. You have a classic selectionutah Valley University on George Bernard shaws major barter. The college of concordeyea about modern china. You have a narrative of frederick douglass, a classic work. It is not possible to choose them. And they are working right now for far too few indeed. And they do exist and they do seem to be working. Therefore, the extracurricular goal, dont worry about building the community. They set themselves a goal, whether they succeeded at it. Confining academic goal, tell what you are doing. We would like them to have smaller committees composed entirely of people, who have a great experience of it. We would like them to integrate reading in to classes. You can do that, you can test for whether you read a book over the summer. We have recommendation that might be better to make the College Admissions process collective. If you can get the current student body to be able to be willing to read, able to read, in the four years, make your admission tighter. We have some confidence in students and colleges, we do actually think simply going to the best existing standards practice, would be a marvelous improvement. It is working for colleges that can do it. It would be even more marvelous and wonderful. A real and practical improvement in Higher Education. I do want to leave you with that. There is hope based on what exists. Marking time here for a minute, technicians make us for questions. Please look interesting. I thought maybe i could fill the time by saying a word about the two top workers this year, the largest number of colleges, the other in westmore, the most popular book in, and reading programs in the country. 15 to 16 separate colleges. And the other west more. A road scholar, a man who is a white house fellow. He read some place in the newspaper a little squib about someone with his name who grew up in baltimore, convicted of murder and serving long term, the other westmore was a drug dealer, crack dealer, the coincidence here is pretty much the entire story. One of them goes on to lead the good life, the other goes on to lead a terrible life. Growing up in the same city right as it happened that way. One in the opposite direction. We dont know whether this is circumstance or whatever it might be. There is a lot to think about, the other westmore have a lot of bad breaks, was ashamed. The reason this gets assigned as much as it does get assigned is it allows the white students to feel not entirely guilty about this. They should have empathy for the other westmore and realized there were choices too. It stands in the little of the black lives matter movement, where we can think about injustice in American Life. It is not entirely involving justice as the other was more is a really bad dudes, a crack dealer who participated in a gang murder, that is what happened. That is what happened some of the times. There is just mercy which is about a guy who ends up in jail without having done anything wrong. This poor fellow is living in rural alabama with a murder committed 11 miles away, two killers who were also black. Cook up a story to make this guy the fall guy, not very energetic police, by the story, convict him, send him to jail, on death row, the author of the book takes up the case and after years of effort exonerate him in shames the prosecutor, the police. This is written some 20 years after he has sprung from jail. In the meantime diet of dementia. Has not had a nice life even after jail. The story would be a real page turner in its own right, about how injustices happen in our society. He takes this as emblematic of the american Justice System which grinds down poor minorities and provides no real justice exit the occasional behavior and parrish it in my brian sullivan. It is part in the mark, partly storytelling. It is like the other wes moore written at junior high level. The ratings i referred to before. An independent body that examines large chunks of text and grade reading levels to it, the other wes moore and there at eighth grade level. The books chosen for common reading easy books. We are ready to go. Time to ask questions. I am going to start this one, mark, your comments about these books suggest you are pretty unhappy with the choices your colleagues are making in English Departments and elsewhere in the university. Could say you are in favor of a kind of censorship. We need a core curriculum. We need a common body of works that everyone reads. This is what i think brings coherence to a culture, it also allows us to let things work themselves out over time and we shouldnt trust our judgments about contemporary works. Very often we are wrong. The test of time is a very good one. You can read something you thought was fantastic. 20 years later it looks awfully dated. In that short time. Talking about censorship, there is a limited amount of time in the day, in this full day on any syllabus. You have to make choices, some good choices or bad choices. The cost is very high. College is a very short year going young peoples lives. This is their only chance to read many of the great works of civilization. They are not going to read them most likely when they are out of college. They have a professor who will guide them through, other students reading the same thing. This is an extraordinary opportunity. When you ask students ten years after college would you regret most about college they dont say i wish i went to more parties. They say i wish i took more courses in art history. I wish i took a little more shakespeare. I realize now college was a unique intellectual growth time. And if the faculty cant provide the resources to make that happen, we need to get other faculty. I want to ask you a question. [applause] you have leveled some carefully worded criticism. I am wondering if you had to shoes what common reading is going to apply to a whole college or a bunch of colleges, what would your pick be and why . My pick will be it is only going to be to the college where i am on the committee because i do not want to impose myself on anybody else, i will pick gen austins persuasion which is a beautiful book, relatively brief book and a book about Second Chances. That is a lesson we all need. I would sure have loved the fact the we have Second Chances in life. Books can be about the near or the far. Howard d come out on the new year off versus strong . The thing that comes to mind is colleges use the word relevant. We indeed books that are close to what Students Experience today. They need a book by and offered their same race or near to than in age, from their same background sociologically. That might have merit, but it is also good to get us out of the things we already know, to help us know things outside of us. Getting outside our current era of bias is a valuable thing. Like you said, there are things that we think are the right way for all time but are really limited to our current age. Far away, robinson crusoe, is that how far you want to go . I like both of those. Point about relevance, a quick one, there are things that are ancient, relevant in young peoples lives. If anyone knows about a better rumination on adolescent peer pressure, augustines study of what happens in that pear orchard that night, i dont know what it is, or i mentioned this earlier when we were talking, the iliad, the section where hector has won some victories, achilles has left him, he gets full of himself and brings his army outside the walls of flight and things start to turn and hector realizes i made a mistake, they are running back inside the walls that hector feels responsible, and doesnt want to show cowardice so he is standing outside the walls. His mother and father are up there, get inside, on walls of troy are impenetrable, and he is sitting there, they are standing back and see a point of light coming for him. It is the achilles coming, the great warrior. At that moment hectors courage, he loses his will. I said to peter earlier you take 100,000 teenage boy is in america today. If you find ten of them who dont know that experience, that guy is coming to get me, through high school, middle school, the neighborhoods they lived in or on the football field, that kind of experience is, i would say, altogether relevant to the 19yearold kid coming through college. Repeat your question for the sake peter wyatt wood. I want to echo what mark said and challenge the idea that far is in the year ended is possible to talk about when you look at facts in english classes. The far easier if we look at it correctly. Not sure what the question is. Isnt a phenomenon of the larger problem . If you have faculty that so abrogated their intellectual responsibilities that they cant decide on classic works for college reading, it would seem unusual that they would throw aside their usual objections to whitecentric culture for their one book for summer reading. I can calfs see how we solve this problem without solving the more egregious problem of the lack of intellectual courage in saying to kids know, you shall read these books on wisdom and greatness during your college years. So we can repeat that. Is not the beach books phenomena and representative of the abdication of intellectual authority and responsibility on the part of teachers, we will not solve this problem without addressing the bigger problem. We have lost the core curriculum so we no longer have anything we can rely on, but here we have one book, one opportunity. I feel like this is a possibility to bring that back. That is what we are trying to do. Not a core curriculum. Far from it. It is representative of a larger loss, this one book, it is possible, is our task to show colleges why there is a need for these books and why they are important. What to you think of the ideal makeup of a committee . I am not sure about english faculty, colleges. I wonder Something Like the faculty who reports these meetings. What is the ideal makeup of the committee that selected books . The English Department or members thereof, but the faculty on campus who read books. I think students should select their own books. Is that a joke . I think i dont know. It depends what you want the book to do, right . As we get to it that the right answer is probably what ever members of the National Association of scholars one word in defense of english faculty, and i had some interesting conversations with friends of mine in various disciplines. A number of them report theres more interest in the can and on behalf of the english faculty than civilization on the part of history faculty. There is some sense if you are going to become an english professor there is a number of trivial fingers, you will get a nontrivial since the john dunne is pretty good. Obviously there are people in english discipline who are not brilliant but there are actually a fair number, any selection criteria you are going to use wont be perfect but actually having some way in the English Department, an italian department, one more shot out, they are pretty good people. One thing that strikes me, at to figure out what crossed my mind, the critique of a process the time that were seeing this process. The technology has made it listening to data and information for the liberation of thinking so the question is how you assess organic intellect, non processed wholefood tight intellect which is not as appealing, accessible in non scholar permeates the environment. Got it. How do you get in on processed intellect out of blended ingredients . Ashley knows about the blended ingredient approach, you were telling me yesterday about this new form of kindle style reading where they match exactly what the student is reading and then give it time. There is a new program you can use for common reading programs to send out digital copies of the book, what page they are on, how fast they are meeting and are trying to game the system by clicking free because they cannot possibly be reading that fast. You can know what days of the week they are reading or, and finished will when they said they did. What do we do to create that richer, more complete mind that would be ideal. 2 models this for students, up to colleges to aspire to that and not to be content with formulas entry process material. Readymade answers. Suggests that the problem is that were not doing the job of lower education when we need to. The colleges, its almost a futile endeavor. Too late. Trying to catch up. Do you think theres any merit to that, what theyre looking at . Is there any merit to the idea that the problem is a k12 problem, students by the time they reach college are kind of a lost cause, that theyve not had a good foundation. Mark . Certainly. You know, of course. And we include the home, the home life in that. Are they growing up in homes with books, parents read to them . We know that for many of these kids those first three or four years of reading with parents is often socioeconomic fate, you know . Kindergarten, its already too late for a lot of the can kids who are 2 or 3,000 words of vocabulary behind the other kids. And the gap only widens as schooling ghosn on. Goes on. Also i would add that Youth Culture has never pressed down on adolescents like it does now mostly because of all the media and all the digital devices now. Young people consume, absorb, are flooded with youthoriented media and entertainment and web sites and communications all the time now. And it just buries them in their leisure lives. And that this is an acculturation for them. And this is already fully in place by the time they enter college. So colleges are looking at students, so many things in their lives have just scripted them and geared them against not just they dont care, they dont theyre actually, you know, resistant the a lot of the intellectual demands that go into college life. They can get over them with the career and money side. If you want to be, you know, an engineer, if you want to go into audiologying, youve got to do audiology, youve got to do this. If you want to become a, an informed citizen and a discertaining Consumer Concern discerning consumer with good tate, youve good to do these things. Youve got to absorb these things. That argument doesnt go very far. Id like to say one thing on the side of hope, if i may. Somebody has to do it. [laughter] let us assume that college cannot solve every problem that has accumulated until then. Okay. That doesnt mean that it can solve nothing, and it doesnt mean that changes in what colleges do wont help, you know . A nontrivial number of people where that means, what, thousands of people, maybe a Million People over the course of years, and its not always immediate. One of the first classes i ever taught an older student. What hes his story . Well, i was a cop, and i got shot in the chest. And as i was recovering in the hospital, i thought i want to do Something Else with my life. So he wanted to come back to college to be a high school teacher, and he was really paying attention. But his first goround in college had planted some of the seeds. Even he hadnt been the Perfect College student by a long shot the first time around, but there was the second time around, and something in the first time around made him want to come back. So theres no need to be a pollyanna, i guess, but neither should we think that the changes we can make will have no effect whatsoever. At some point wonderfully in the future. You really take jane austen seriously, dont you . [laughter] carol. Yes. Two short questions. Do you think Something Like the size of the classic that has been made into a film might work and then have an actress or director come to the campus x do you see hope in the fact that none of the books seem to involve zombies or vampires . [laughter] they do. World war z was assigned. [laughter] well, let me make a comment of my own and then turn to ashley on this whos loaded for bear on, i think, this question. There are many, many books on our list that have been made into movies, so many that early on we got to the list, the check off column, is there a movie, is there a movie, and a great many of the books already have movies, others are movies in the works. So moviemaking is i meant classics though. Classics, well, okay. So persuasion has, i dont know if perruations been made persuasions been made. [inaudible] there you go. Im not uptodate. The issue is can we improve the marketing of classic books, the other media, and is that a good idea . Yeah. The thought is that only if the author comes to speak will we have something interesting, an event for students. But colleges have gotten really creative. Weve had art competitions, open mic nights, military demonstrations, science experiments. Theres one college that has a Shakespeare Festival every year and a different book by shakespeare. And so, yeah, movie night is a good idea. There was one, university of wisconsinparkside, assigned Edgar Allen Poe and had a poe impersonator come to campus. [laughter] so if its a dead author, you can always get an impersonator. [laughter] if the movie exists, theyll watch the movie and not red the book read the book, as often as not. Well, you know what happened in seinfeld when the judge [inaudible] breakfastbreakfast at tiffany, of course, changes the whole plot of the book. I dont think i can repeat that, but [laughter] yes. A threepart question. Has any thought been begin to why theres only been given to why theres only one common book assigned . Why not two . And why not a rotation where one year you have something from the Science Department that they suggest and history another year, something from art and mathematics, literature, that way . And the third is why not, indeed, have some sort of testing or assignment that [inaudible] these kids are coming from high school whether the curriculum is good or not where theyre used to accountability. So the threepart questions are why not more than one book, why not rotation among the disciplines yes. And the third one was the test. On some specific assignment. On some specific assignments. Ill dispose two of those pretty quickly. Some colleges do assign more than one book. Of course, the question of whether they will actually read it magnifies that more reading is done, so its not very common, but it does happen. And, yes, some colleges do test. And it seems to work well, and its a question of why more dont do it. The third rotation birdies palin ive not by discipline ive not heard of. Ashleysome. I have not, but i think its a good idea. Ditto. Recommendation. I have a question whether this has ever been used as a rationale for choosing literature. S. C. Lewis, the literary scholar, said the reason to read was to inhabit other world withs, to expan your mind expand your mind, to ten out of your time to step out of your time and your culture and your race and your gender and to imagine what life is like in some other era, some other culture. And the whole theory of [inaudible] and its kind of a harry potter or a fantasy literature or toll key yen tolkien. Has that kind of rationale ever been used to select literature . Because thats not racist, thats not the wrp canon, thats just sort of an active imagination. Has that argument ever been used to select literature, and if not, why not . Has the argument ever been put forward to select books based on the imaginative distance from the here and now . Thinking of fantasy literature as maybe the biggest embodiment of that. I think that questions related to my near versus far question earlier yeah. But i think im going to turn to david on that first because he is a much stronger fan of the fantastic, and im much more rooted in the realistic. I guess i would say, in effect, i think thats what they think theyre doing now. There are two troubles. One is their sense of what is different is based upon very narrow categories of modern multiculturalism which, in effect, means somebody in effect, somebody from somewhere else in the year 2010 is presumed to be remarkably different from us x theres no sense of how greatly much more different people were 500 years ago from wherever. So its a very narrow sort of diversity that is being chosen for. The other thing for Science Fiction is its, actually, one of the most common fiction things done, but thats not because its its no longer because it is new and different, its because thats now the default genre fiction that people read. The default movies that they see. I love Science Fiction and fantasy, but when its chosen, its usually because it stretches the students less, not because it stretches them more. And fiction is very rare. Its nonfiction is more than 70 of the books chose p. And of those nonfiction, most are memoirs. So its very much a lot of the subtitles are my journey, my struggle, my year in blank. So its very me focused rather than theres dangers in this, too, in that a fair amount of these things get exposed after a year or two as fraud. Three cups of tea turned out to be a week of fiction masquerading as a memoir. So weve spoken a lot about communication, this problem with communication. My question is, is what how do we know [inaudible] because i think really the root of the issue is how many times have we heard the phrase publish or perish . Faculty who are forced to seek out, you know, areas of research where none have gone before and really actually driving, trying to find something new and different constantly. And i would argue the scholarships that youre being encouraged to pursue in modern academia is in large part following a trend very similar in many ways to the themes found in this book in is the sense that [inaudible] trying to be different, engaged with particular themes in society. Its resulting in scholarships that, you know, then you find professors who are not engaged in their students education [inaudible] how would you respond to that . How much of a factor is the straining after originality by faculty members who, in their efforts to avoid the perishing part of publishing, have delegated the reading of material to that totem of the university and have allowed these themes of race, class, gender, jenner preference to become gender preference to become pretty much the all and all of beach books . Well, i can speak for the humanities and the softer areas of the campus. Weve got a par gain in place a bargain in place between faculty and students. The bargain is on the faculty side im going to show up to class and give you a syllabus, im going to give you a decent lecture, presentation, and then im going to go away. Youre going to do what youre supposed to do on the syllabus, and youll submit those materials and take those tests, and youll get, or youll get a decent grade. Lets not spend too much time talking in my office, lets not do too much extracurricular contact. I dont want to sit around and talk with you for 45 minutes about why, why shes getting up in the middle of the night and washing her hands, you know, walking the halls. Lets not get into that. [laughter] youve got the syllabus, youve got the assignments, you know what to do. Ill see you later at the exam. Thats the bargain. I wont bother you too much, you dont bother me too much, and the system will continue going. I think that if students learn no other [inaudible] before they get to college, they at least believe in the virtue of efficiency. Is it simply that reading books is just too slow for students . Is reading books just too slow for students, and thats why colleges have dumbed down their reading lists thus far . Opinions . Sometimes, i mean, one gets the sense that they havent even tried to know. So its just not their priority. I mean, its not that difficult to read if you put, if you spend some time on it. I dont think the slowness of it is the problem. Its just the sheer lack of interest. But i can see how in much of the high achiever world spending you know, all summer long to read the novels of henry james, that doesnt sound very productive, right . That doesnt go along with building a resume, it doesnt go along with, you know, doing internships or, i mean, i can see how what youre saying does sound inefficient in terms of the high achiever focus on so much of their lives if their high achievement isnt directly oriented around books. I mean, you know, 200 years ago it would be expected of leaders in civilized nations to have all done their reading. You just, this is these are lessons in leadership, right . Good lessons and bad lessons. You know . George washington, he stages cato for his troops to watch, addisons play about cato, because he thinks this is an porn thing, this is what an important thing, this is what people should know. Those things dont seem to go with success so much in the contemporary world than other activities of, you know, building up your social media time or networking in certain ways or getting, doing those things that can go on a resume. So it seems we need to change what we value as a society. Well be able to take two more questions. Sir, ill take give me tell me im being too sip call. Coming back to this larger question, shes gone now. If the faculty is, if the tone on campus is to resist this common culture and theyre trying to create community by assigning a book, is there an attempt to create a community of people who resist community . [laughter] paradox call question here. Paradoxical question here. Tell me im too cynical. Are beach books programs you wouldnt choose the classics if youre trying to create a community of people [inaudible] this is a reference to the anticulture on campus, its optional character oppositional character for the inher taps of inheritance of western civilization, rejection of whats new and breaking on our shores. I want to add one more goodwill thought, im sorry. The people who serve on these committees are the ones who are dedicated to the college. They may not have made choices i like, but they put in the time. And, yeah, theyve got more of a sense of community than the ones who slacked off doing any Community Service at all. I dont mean slackers i mean, the professors. Among the faculty. I mean, so the people so youve got at least some bias among the people who are selecting the books for people who actually care about their college and their students. I would add, i would ask of the questioner, are they on that committee . They volunteered for it because they want to control what the, what every student has to read and they dont want the wrong books in students hands . [inaudible] yes. [laughter] ashley . I was just going to say you bring up a good point that contemporary books that are no longer popular in a few years limit your community to just those readers at that time. And if you do read a classic, it connects you to the whole, the generations who have gone before and who will go after you, that you can. [inaudible] im just suggesting the faculty itself is contradicting itself. Last question, sir. Im wondering if it might make sense you understand this development to be happening in terms of [inaudible] and politics seems to be kind of an addon. But suppose its the other way around. Supposest the university that suppose its the university that redefine cans itself as a Political Force and these programs are intended to elicit that force. Talking about political community. Now, if thats so, then the intellectual discipline really doesnt, really isnt part of that. It isnt necessary for that. Put this in a question . Well, im just saying what would happen if [inaudible] all right. So theres a possibility that were being too gentle about all this, that its not a mere accident that there is a political subtext to these books, but its the political agenda that is driving the selection of books. The National Association of scholars is friendly to that point of view. In fact, we rather [laughter] led with it in our previous years of presentation on this and in some of the opeds weve been writing about it. Ive tried to rein it in a little bit in that theres clearly some element of goodwill in the selection of these books. Its not just all about politics. They could do a lot worse. It is not ap agenda an agenda, reading noam chomsky 24 hours a day. Something else is going on. One of the popular books this year that i didnt previously mention is outcast united. Its another, basically, Childrens Book about a multicultural soccer team in south carolina, a dogooder volunteer who organizes a bunch of immigrant kids from all over the world whose prospects are bleak and suddenly their lives are transformed because they can all play soccer together. Peter . Adapted for young people by warren st. John. Right. Warren st. John, the New York Times writer. He adapted it for young people, he took 100 pages out of it, so so this is the shorter or version suitable for college students. [laughter] but the title rather nicely captures the spirit of this whole enterprise. The outcast united, the students are taught to think of themselves as outcasts, theyre united in coming together in this oppositional enterprise in which theyre going to generate a new, more wholesome culture, and thats one main reason why books, not just classics in the classical sense, but books written before they were born are so few. 91 of the books assigned in common reading programs around the country this year were written after these children were born. 91 . So its as though the written word hardly existed before they did. There are a few sort of hints that there might have been something written down in english earlier, but you have to go to some pretty faraway colleges in southern utah and places like that to find them. I would say there is a major exception right here in new york city. Columbia university assigned the iliad as common reading this year. This is not a story of uniform disgrace everywhere. Its a story in which, what are we up to, 350 colleges this year that assigned this . The great majority of them have taken the easy path into a world in which the books they assign are unchallenging. The content of them is overtly political. There is a quality of intellectual squalor that has overtaken this enterprise. As an organization, the National Association of scholars and i think first thing as well a kind of duty to be optimistic, to try to find something in this that can redeem this enterprise. If colleges are not going to go back and recreate some kind of core curriculum, a common reading may be only a bandaid, but at least its a bandaid. And, therefore, let us go out and find the best bandaids we can. Certainly, enriques journey or just mercy dont make the cut. We need something a little bit better than that and some suasion on the part of those who do like to read can go a long way. So i imagine every Single Person in this room is here because books have changed your life. Something that you read at some point, it turned on your life and made you somebody who wanted to read for the rest of your life. And you care about that. And we want you to take that caring into this public discussion. Publish a 200page about this and hang our head and say what a sad situation it is. But all of you who have friends and influence and family members who care about these things too. So we urge you to go out and talk about this. Lets get a conversation started in this country about better books for the beach and maybe beyond the beach. Not just sand castles, were looking for something more substantial than that. So i thank you for coming, i thank first things for having us. [applause] the oklahoma land rush, i hope, im giving away copies of two of my books while they last. Mark has put some of his books up here. I dont know if hes giving them away or selling them. You can make a choice. [laughter] theyre half price, actually. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] thanks again for coming. I hope well see you at future events. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres a look at whats on prime time tonight. We kick off the evening at 6 45 p. M. Eastern with eric erickson. His book is you will be made to care the war on faith, family and your freedom to believe. Then at 7 30 former u. N. Assistant secretary general Michael Doyle talks about interventionism. And at nine, science journalist sonya shaw reports on the spread of infectious disease. Thats followed by after words with Washington Post columnist e. J. Dionne talking to fox news Juan Williams about republican politics. And we finish up our prime time programming with an 11 p. M. Program, John Steele Gordon gives a history of the washington monument. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. [inaudible conversations] good evening, everyone. My name is vicki goodman, and on behalf of the friends of the institute for neuroscience and Human Behavior at ucla, it is my pleasure to the welcome you to this open mind presentation. We are honored and proud to have with us this evening a preeminent scientist who really needs no introduction to this audience. Our director of the institute and author of the