<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><br><div><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">All the books are recent, so much so that the publisher labels the 2006 <i>Enrique’s Journey</i> “a classic.” All but <i>Garbology</i> are written to the level of junior high students or below. (<i>March</i> is written to the level of fourth graders, according to the independent Lexile ratings.) And all of them urgently promote the agenda of the campus left...</span></p><div><br></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="https://pjmedia.com/">PJ Media</a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 14px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>Universities Assign Simplistic, Childish Books as Common Reading for Incoming Freshmen</b></span></p><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">By <a href="https://pjmedia.com/columnist/peter-wood"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Peter Wood</span></a> February 9, 2016</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Reading a book is like going to a dinner party. You agree not just to spend time with your host, the author, but with all the other invited guests—your fellow readers. If the party goes well, you meet people you like, and you definitely have something to talk about.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Colleges and universities have caught onto this idea. From Princeton University to tiny Hesston College in Kansas (“Start here, go everywhere”), <a href="https://www.nas.org/projects/beachbooks"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">some 350 institutions</span></a> of higher learning this year assigned a single book that all the freshmen were asked to read. As the colleges see it, these common reading programs “build community.” Between the hors d’oeuvres and the demitasse, the students will discover their mutual admiration of…Homer, Proust, Hemingway? No, not quite.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">The host books of these community-building parties definitely aren’t classics. The seven most assigned books this year are:</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Other-Wes-Moore-Name-Fates/dp/0385528205/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454600510&sr=1-1&keywords=Other+Wes+Moore"><i>The Other Wes Moore</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i></i></span></a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">16 colleges, including Kansas State University, assigned this 2011 memoir by Rhodes Scholar Wes Moore in which he contrasts his fortunate life with a namesake crack dealer in prison for murder.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812994523/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=71790704467&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14999819480460503727&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_3y4b55p450_b"><i>Just Mercy</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i></i></span></a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">14 colleges, including the University of Wisconsin, Madison, assigned this 2014 account of author Bryan Stevenson’s successful efforts to spring a black man in Alabama wrongfully convicted of murder.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0345807294/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454600557&sr=8-1&keywords=circle+eggers"><i>The Circle</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i></i></span></a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">6 colleges, including the University of Tennessee, assigned this 2014 novel by Dave Eggers depicting a Google-like corporation’s attempt to take over the world.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/March-Book-One-John-Lewis/dp/1603093001/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1454601034&sr=8-2&keywords=March"><i>March: Book One</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i></i></span></a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">6 colleges, including one of the SUNY campuses, assigned this 2013 comic book memoir of the life of Civil Rights protester John Lewis.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enriques-Journey-Sonia-Nazario/dp/0812971787/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454601065&sr=8-1&keywords=Enriques%27s+Journey"><i>Enrique’s Journey</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i></i></span></a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">5 colleges, including Williams College, assigned this 2006 reconstruction by journalist Sonia Nazario of an unaccompanied Honduran child’s illegal entry into the United States.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Garbology-Dirty-Love-Affair-Trash/dp/1583335234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454601592&sr=8-1&keywords=Garbology"><i>Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i></i></span></a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">5 colleges, including Penn State, assigned journalist Edward Humes’ 2012 polemic against American landfills.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Outcasts-United-American-Refugee-Difference/dp/0385522045"><i>Outcasts United</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i></i></span></a></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">5 colleges, including Indiana University, assigned journalist Warren St. John’s 2006 account of a soccer team made up of children from various Third World countries.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Each book is, in effect, its own dinner party, but it’s funny how all seven parties seem so similar. All the books are recent, so much so that the publisher labels the 2006 <i>Enrique’s Journey</i> “a classic.” All but <i>Garbology</i> are written to the level of junior high students or below. (<i>March</i> is written to the level of fourth graders, according to the independent Lexile ratings.) And all of them urgently promote the agenda of the campus left. <i>The Other Wes Moore</i> is about systemic racial injustice. <i>Just Mercy</i> is about racial injustice and the systemic unfairness of American law. <i>The Circle</i> is about the dangerous powers of big business and threats to privacy. <i>March</i> is about the struggle to overcome racial injustice. <i>Enrique’s Journey</i> is about injustice to immigrants—and racial injustice. <i>Garbology</i> is about America’s heedless consumerism and destruction of the environment. <i>Outcasts United</i> is about social activism as a way to advance multicultural understanding, help immigrants, and overcome racial injustice.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Hey, I have no problem with students in college learning about crack dealers in Baltimore; poor guys railroaded to death row in Alabama; big-bad corporations snooping into our personal lives, and so on. People who want to read these books should go right ahead. I’ve read them and survived to tell.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>But if you consider the special status a book gains when it is picked as the only common reading a college class will ever have, these books—childishly simplistic in theme, substance, and style—are a sorry lot. It’s as though every party you’ve been invited to offers a menu that serves only Happy Meals.</b></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">My colleagues and I at the National Association of Scholars have been reporting on the common reading picks for the last six years in an annual study we call<i> </i><a href="http://www.nas.org/beachbooks"><i>Beach Books</i></a>. </span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">We’ve seen the choices go from bad to worse, year by year. It is not that every college freshman is ready to plunge into <i>The Republic</i> or <i>Middlemarch</i>. But we could do a lot better than we currently do. We offer a long list of “better books for the beach,” which ranges from Albert Camus to Zora Neale Hurston. <b>There is a world of wonderful books awaiting the college freshman once he gets the idea that there are things written before he was born that are—astonishingly—still worth reading. The message from our colleges these days, however, is the exact opposite. Well over 90 percent of the assigned books are younger than our college freshmen.</b></span></p><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b><br></b></span></div></div></div></div><br></body></html>