<p>Common Read book assignments for incoming freshman are catching on at an increasing number of colleges:</p>
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In an attempt to welcome students to the college classroom experience before they even move into the dorms, a growing number of universities are dishing out summer reading assignments to their first-year students. The reading programs differ from school to school but commonly include group discussions during orientation weeks that continue throughout the fall semester....
<p>Sometimes a city will read the same book. I remember a few years ago, the city of Bakersfield read The Grapes of Wrath (which made good sense for Bake).</p>
<p>There was a book my sister was strongly recommended to read before entering Dartmouth. </p>
<p>Every student at the University of Chicago is supposed to start off reading Plato's The Apology, but it's read in class. During orientation, there is a speech called the Aims of Education address. The address is followed by professor-led seminars in the houses. There is no summer reading book, though.</p>
<p>To the mother who replied about her son's AP homework-it isn't unusual to have AP classes or homework. I'm only taking AP US & AP Lang and I have 4 books (Rebecca, Howard's End, Lord of the Flies, and the End of the Affair...long books) & have to read 3 chapters of my text & complete essays, workbooks, etc.</p>
<p>Pomona College asked its 2006 freshmen to read Fareed Zacharia's , The Future of Freedom over the summer before coming to campus. The students discussed the book at some point during orientation week.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>My kids' high school has mandatory summer reading for every grade. Usually two or three books. Some sort of test the first week of school. I remember Bone and The Things They Carried before senior year, and I think The House On Mango Street and Walkabout before freshman year.</p></li>
<li><p>Philadelphia does a "One Book, One City" thing every year. This year it was Waiting For Snow In Havana. It's reasonably popular.</p></li>
<li><p>Then, of course, there's Oprah. I recently e-mailed my daughter to tease her that with a stroke of the pen Oprah had turned her into a middlebrow. She wrote one of her college application essays on why she loved Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex so much.</p></li>
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<p>FSU have a reading book assignment program also. "A hope in the unseen" about a guy who went from the worse inner city high school to an IVY league university.</p>
<p>It's required for all incoming freshmen and to make sure we read it, somehow it's put into all of our classes in quizes and test which is kind of odd for freshmen who have sophomore classes or APed out of the freshmen courses.</p>
<p>You know me, I have a "fresh" perspective ;)
[b*itch]
The phrase "social justice" is so overused by people who are caucasian- upper middle income and educated. My experience with that term has been dominated by those who are all for "diversity", as long as they get to decide what it means to be "diverse".</p>
<p>Also, I would hope that those students at these schools get a glimpse of the rigor that will be expected of them in class, assigning popular novels that kids read here in middle school like the Kite Runner and Life of Pi, doesn't seem to fill that void.
Persepolis, while a fun read & the sequel is even better, takes about 30 minutes to finish as it is a graphic novel.</p>
<p>All of the above titles are also focused on other continents, but Id also like to see students of "expensive east coast colleges" to be exposed to the diversity that exists within our own borders. Perhaps reading books like The Liars club * by a woman who was raised in an East Texas refinery town, or * The Glass castle by a woman who started out in a mining town in West Virginia and ended up on Park Place in NYC ( albeit watching her mother literally dig through dumpsters)[/b*itch] Janet knows what I be talkin bout</p>
<p>My daughter read the Iliad in the summer * supposedly all of it*, but as she was also a student mentor for students expressing the desire for one ( either first gen- low income- minority students) she also read books like A hope in the Unseen- following Cedric Jennings from his innercity school in DC to Brown University ( which I think the UW used last year)</p>
<p>DS2 had to read The Odyssey before freshman year in HS. He had to read Kaffir Boy over the summer entering 7th grade, and Things Fall Apart that fall. Last of the Mohicans was the reading for the summer entering 8th grade. DS1 read Guns, Germs and Steel over the summer as required reading for his AP World class, and Caro's Master of the Senate (bio on LBJ) before AP US Gov't.</p>
<p>Yeah, I have a book to read. Actually two, because since we have such "close relations" with the school next to us, we have to read their book also. :| I don't mind reading the book for our school, it seems interesting, but the other school's book does interest me at all so its going to be a painful read. :P</p>
<p>:( Wow. My kids would hate a college imposed summer reading list. They are so happy to finally be able to read what they want over the summer, after all those years of middle and high school imposed summer reading lists!</p>
<p>Every freshman at my daughter's school is given a copy of their "Common Book", and one of the requirements for the selection committee is that the author be available to visit campus at least once during the year. For my daughter's class, they read Martin Goldsmith's "The Inextinguishable Symphony." Mr. Goldsmith visited campus twice, and the college symphony did a concert featuring many of the pieces he mentioned throughout the book. Each student is also required to turn in a paper on the book the first day of classes, which gives the professors of the freshman integrative studies courses an opportunity to see the writing styles/aptitude of the students. </p>
<p>My daughter thoroughly enjoyed her common book and is already reading the common book for this year's freshman...it hasn't been announced to the freshman, but she was able to get one of her professors to spill...!</p>
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Perhaps reading books like The Liars club by a woman who was raised in an East Texas refinery town, or The Glass castle by a woman who started out in a mining town in West Virginia and ended up on Park Place in NYC ( albeit watching her mother literally dig through dumpsters)
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<p>Gifted Hands, Ben Carson's autobiography, was a very good story IMO that traces his humble roots. We read it in ninth grade. One of the most interesting anecdotes is that when he was applying to college, he was poor enough to qualify for fee waivers but because he didn't have any access to counseling, he had no idea that fee waivers existed. So only having $10 in cash, enough for the application fee to one school, he sat at the table deciding whether to apply to UMich (IS, sure bet) or take a chance and apply to Yale, which he knew was good, but had no idea whether he could get in, and would have no backup. So he thought a little more and sent it off to Yale and just hoped (he did get in). But the contrast to what he went through is so different than the perception people have of others in that situation having it easy or something because they qualify for this or that - so what if he did, he didn't even have the resources to KNOW what he qualified for. </p>
<p>And Ben Carson, arguably the best surgeon in America for some things and an extremely bright person, was put on a vocational track early in his high school career, because his mother was uneducated and they were poor minorities. This happened to a lot of kids like him, luckily his mother was a strong women and knew she wanted better, so she went and demanded he be moved into not only regular but college prep classes. They eventually acquiesced. But still, it makes you wonder how many other people slipped by, maybe their parents couldn't get off work to go to the school or couldn't understand the system.</p>
<p>This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolffe is also pretty good. </p>
<p>However I also don't have a problem with exposure to international problems although I agree with you, a broader range should be covered including social injustice in the US. We also studied Nickeled and Dimed.</p>