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I love this piece by Walt Hunter--both his reflections on how his students are now reading, and the changes he's made in the writing requirements for his course.
Generously excerpted below, but do use the gift link to read the whole essay.
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I’ve witnessed the slow erosion of attention firsthand, too: students on computers in the back of lecture halls, then on phones throughout the classroom, then outsourcing their education to artificial intelligence. We know that tech companies supply the means of distraction. But somehow the blame falls on the young reader. Whole novels aren’t possible to teach, we are told, because students won’t (or can’t) read them. So why assign them?...I am now convinced that I was wrong to listen to the ostensible wisdom of the day—and that teachers of literature are wrong to give up assigning the books we loved ourselves. There may be plenty of good reasons to despair over the present. The literature classroom should not be one of them...
Two things became clear in the early weeks of class. First, the students were reading. They were reading everything, or most of it. I know this because I had them identify obscure passages, without notes, devices, or books at hand. Second, they were experiencing life in a way that was not easy outside the class and its assignments. They were expected—required—to give huge chunks of time to an activity, reading, that was not monetizing their attention in real time. They had, in effect, taken back their lives, for an hour or two each day. It turned out that American literature, which so often flirts with utopian fantasies of regaining control—hello, Walden!—could do precisely that.
To give the students time to read, I had to change the way they wrote. I axed the take-home essays I’d assigned before—this wasn’t a “writing” class, anyway—and assigned what I suspected were far more difficult in-class, timed “flash essays,” with prompts I gave the same day. No trudging back from the library with 10 pages on Woolf in the special season of Cleveland weather we call “stupid cold.” Long, research-based essay assignments had always worked well for the top students in the class, the ones who were already trained to write. But I’ve rarely seen, over the course of my career, the kind of development I hoped for in the majority of students whom I asked to write that way...
When we started Walden, plenty of students were turned off by Thoreau’s long-winded musings on the real-estate market in New England. Two classes later, Thoreau was a friend for life. His timeless needling felt timely: “We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep half our life.” Despite his flight to the woods, Thoreau was more easily distracted than any of us—by birdsong, by a train whistle, by the sound of ice cracking. He could barely sustain a single thought without jumping to an unrelated idea. Walden is a book that freely indulges in distraction—not to dull our senses, but to keep ourselves awake, curious, delighted, enraged. Thoreau’s world sends us constant notifications, and by doing so, asks us to reject the “vain reality” where we have been “shipwrecked.” The iterative process of confusion, endurance, and incremental understanding is what literature professors teach when they assign whole books. This march toward understanding doesn’t have a great name other than reading. We need to help students grow into the difficulty of reading. The best way to do that is not to “meet them where they are,” a bromide that has become doctrine for higher education. We have to do as Whitman says instead: Stop somewhere ahead and wait for them to catch up...
[T]the whole notion of having to defend literature or the humanities in the first place may have us wrong-footed. It’s not only what you learn from reading Moby-Dick—notwithstanding Melville’s extensive knowledge of 19th-century whaling—but what you are doing when you are reading Moby-Dick. You are neither learning a transferable skill nor escaping from the world’s demands that you do. You are not word-maxxing or optimizing information for efficiency. You are engaged in a singular practice, one with its own primary justification.
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Stop Meeting Students Where They Are
www.theatlantic.com
What I learned when I finally started assigning the hard reading again.1 hour ago
“With its own primary justification”—YES!!!
This is a good article. I enjoyed it--I have been asked to be classical lead at my small school and I would like to see more reading in literature class. In my history class we trounce through texts, we have little debates in class, and we do our best to put ourselves in a time not our own to understand decisions made, actions avoided, and question from a hindsight view. My students complain my class is so hard, but than most are in the 90's--and I am a difficult grader. The students can do so much more, and when they know, after experience, that they can do it, that there is a joy in the purpose of knowledge--the reading and the conversations never cease.
I am fascinated by this opinion piece. I've never heard of this little college. Does anyone have experience to share?
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Founded in 1917 by the business magnate LL Nunn, Deep Springs might be the country’s most selective college and it is certainly the smallest, admitting just 12 to 15 students a year. The entire student body fits into three Chevy Suburbans.
At this private two-year college, where most students transfer to top schools upon graduation, we are also expected to look after a fully operational ranch and about 300 head of cattle. Students live on site and do much of the necessary manual labour, from shoeing horses to delivering calves. We also clean, garden, butcher, mend fences, milk the dairy cows, feed the animals, maintain the farm vehicles, cook for the entire college (twice a day, every day) and wash all the dishes...
Every Tuesday night...six or seven students take their turn at a podium to give an intensely personal, moving, funny speech as part of a mandatory class in public speaking. Students look forward to the annual spring holiday called Shakespeare Week when we read, discuss and perform the Bard’s plays for 72 hours straight. Last year I directed a production of Antony and Cleopatra, and this year I’m doing Hamlet.
We also read long, puzzling books, pen in hand. Each semester’s classes are wildly diverse and intensely challenging. Recent offerings include: black holes and special relativity, Heidegger’s history of philosophy, abstract algebra, horsemanship, public speaking, welding, Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed and the art of the gun. Most of them require at least six hours of reading per session, and showing up without having done the reading is unheard of. Even practiced readers are forced to rapidly expand their attentive capacity. Reading, and only reading, for hours and hours — this is our bread and butter.
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‘I study at an exclusive US college. We can’t drink, use wi-fi or leave during term’
www.thetimes.com
Hidden deep in the California desert is a university where internet is banned and students are taught the meaning of life. Ruby LaRocca reveals why she loves it1 day ago
Yep. My high school boyfriend attended. It's a very intense place, but he had an amazing experience there. Very intellectual. At least back in the day, students helped choose the professors and they were chosen partially based on interests of the current group. They also had a say in admissions because they wanted students who would fit into the community well. I know he was in favor of the shift to co-ed though it was still all male when he was there. The alum network is incredibly strong.
I learned about it when I was in high school, nearly 50 years ago, and thought about applying, but didn't for a variety of reasons. But I have followed it ever since, and I've met a few alumni. I should add that it is an intensely secular school in many ways. The few alumni I've met are very smart, curious but skeptical about religion, interesting in many ways. Given the size of the school (25 or so students and only for 2 years), it has produced an outsized number of MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars, etc.
Interesting. We examined the route of sending our 3 to (more) sequestered institutions like Christian colleges, but they decided to attend state schools and live at home. Daughter is at VCU and son is going to UVA in the fall.
I wanted to apply, but it used to be only for men. So, reading this is interesting.
Yes, I've heard of it. I think it is a tragedy that it went co-ed.
I've seen job ads for teaching at this school - once my kids are grown, it would be amazing, I think!
Yes, and the students aid in faculty selection. A pretty great experience all around for the right student.
Sounds a whole lot like a ranch homeschool lol
60 minutes did a segment on Deep Springs College: youtu.be/6MxqQGPc1gc?si=L5SnkE7TNs_JlLjz
Yes, my husband, in his endless search for affordable college options, found it. There are a few things that are "unusual" like naked parties but it definitely would be a good fit for some. As article says, many graduates end up going to prestigious universities afterwards and having a prominent careers.
Yup a good hs friend went, it’s free. He was in the same class as Senator Andy Kim (NJ).
I remember reading an article about this place maybe 15 years ago and felt the same way...SO intrigued!!! It sounds like such a unique and amazing place, and I'd love to know what the alumni are doing today.. inspiring article!
Sounds like growing up with my family
Two of my classmates went there, which is remarkable since it is such a small school. It would have been my top school, but at that time it was for men only. I'm glad it went co-ed now. All students go on full scholarships, too!
If I could shave 50 years off my life that would be my first choice if I could beg my way in. Sounds wonderful
Except for the reading, it sounds like the kind of place they used to send troubled teens.
I saw a 60 Minutes piece on this school several years ago — it is fascinating.
Back in the 90’s, when we were researching colleges, my dad found this place and was utterly fascinated by it.
I looked at it when I was applying to colleges and thought it sounded really cool but it was all men’s at the time.
I remember coming across this school years ago. I don’t remember the reason why I came across it though. It sound intriguing that’s for sure.
One of my state senators went there. That's how I first heard of this school.
I’ve heard of them! In my youth it was men-only.
Sounds great to me. It's like my program, but for college!
No, but thanks for sharing this. Kind of sounds like our homeschool, actually......
It is all good stuff....however, if they don't know why they are on this earth...whether or not there is a purpose to surviving life on this planet..if it is only, maybe meaningful, while they are alive....and who knows how long that will be...it is only survival of the 'fittest'.....ugh!!!!
