https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/us/college-summer-reading.html?_r=0
Interesting article on required reading for incoming freshmen
Thanks for sharing. My daughter’s summer novel just arrived from her college. “The Fifth Season” looks like a good read and hopefully it will add to her excitement about starting the next phase of her education.
In the summer before college I had to read three books for my college honors program. I don’t remember one of them, but I do remember the other two: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, by Beverly Daniel Tatum (who was at the time the president of my college); and Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America, by John McWhorter.
I think summer reading is good. It introduces college student to the sort of texts they will be expected to read in college, and is sort of a low-stakes way to easing into a college-level analysis of books - particularly nonfiction, which many students may heretofore have little experience reading and analyzing. And they do help expand the mind and promote different ways of thinking.
I will say that I do agree with the critic in that many colleges could do a better job of exposing students to a variety of thought, including conservative thought. The McWhorter book we had to read was a conservative piece - his argument is that most of the serious problems facing black Americans are not due to systemic racism but inherent traits of black Americans, like victimhood and anti-intellectualism. I personally don’t agree…BUT it was very important to be exposed to that way of thinking and the arguments therein. Being exposed to a variety of perspectives means students learn to think for themselves rather than simply parroting back the values they’ve been indoctrinated with.
But the critic who says that it doesn’t stretch your mind to read about diversity is dumb. And clearly has never read any of the books cited (I read Evicted a couple of weeks ago. I actually studied how socioeconomic status and discrimination intersect with health and well-being in graduate school, and the book still managed to surprise me.)
The classic writers the National Association of Scholars recommends in the article (Tolstoy, Hurston, Ellison) are likely to have been read in high school. I read *Invisible Man/i and *Their Eyes Were Watching God/i in 12th grade. Frankenstein, too. I think college reading lists should go beyond the writers and theorists that students are likely to have already come across in high school, or are going to address in freshman English. Jane Jacobs is a good suggestion though!
I also agree with some of the criticism of the contemporary works. I was underwhelmed by Nickel and Dimed. Interestingly, I read it in graduate school. I read The Circle on my own and I was also underwhelmed; Eggers’ criticism of technology’s invasion on life is not at all nuanced nor does it shed any new light or make you think.
I’d also push for more non-Western authors! Or, more specifically, non-American and non-European authors. Maybe some Fanon, some Freire, some Cesaire? (We read The Wretched of the Earth, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Discourse on Colonialism in our first-year seminar in college. So good!) Khaled Hosseini is amazing, as are Salman Rushdie, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie and Nnedi Okorafor. Prior to college the only non-Western writer most college students will probably have been exposed to is Chinua Achebe, who is sort of expected to single-handedly speak for all of Africa through Things Fall Apart. And maybe Rudyard Kipling, which…
OK, I will stop talking now. I love books.
My son’s incoming freshmen summer read: “What is Populism?” by Jan-Werner Müller. He’s reading it now, but I got to read it first. Well, as the book title indicates, the author did provide the answer to the question in a rather dry, academic parlance but nevertheless brilliantly. Never realized the word, populism, was such a slippery one. Given today’s political climate not just in this country but all around the world, particularly in Europe, this book should be a timely read for anyone interested.
The school wide reading choice is, and should be, different than the books chosen for lit courses (and others- my 2 semesters of honors freshman chemistry in the early '70’s included reading the then recent Silent Spring and The Double Helix- I still remember that decades later). I noted when skimming the link that UW-Madison, my liberal alma mater, chose a conservative book per the article this year. A comment about getting more discussion from that.
Students can take courses in Literature in Translation, Science Fiction and Fantasy and a whole host of standards to go beyond their HS courses. A current, topical book for beyond a class reading exposes students of all majors to something they can discuss and have in common. We are all products of our time.
@TiggerDad But he’ll have to read a different one for next year when he actually arrives on campus 
@Dolemite - Yup! and I’m really curious what next year’s summer reading would be. Hopefully, it’s something not-so academic! We decided to read this year’s summer book because of the interesting topic in itself (and it’s very short!) How’s your daughter finding the populism book if she’s started it?
Even though I agree that a non-fiction book might have been a better choice for freshman reading, it was nice to see how excited and inspired D was as she got further into “The Fifth Season”. She was very tired the other night and was determined to go to bed early, to have more energy for work the next day. But I found her on her bedroom floor reading at 11:30 and she said, “but I just can’t put it down! I must finish it!”. I’ve always enjoyed her love of reading - books were always her favorite gifts.
@TiggerDad It arrived right before she left for South America. She says she’s read it. Right now she’s heavily into Proust.