Free The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein Page A

large national surveys of college freshmen say otherwise, drawing the bibliophobia up into the more ambitious ranks. In January 2007, higher education consulting firm Noel-Levitz released its National Freshman Attitudes Report, a 100-question survey of students who’d just entered college. The 97,000 freshmen who completed the questionnaire expressed the optimism and determination one would expect from young adults in a new phase of life. Nearly all of them (93.6 percent) pledged to finish college “no matter what obstacles get in my way,” and 88.8 percent intended to “make the effort and sacrifice that will be needed” to attain their goals. Their enthusiasm, however, doesn’t correspond to the reality that only 46.9 percent of entering students graduate within five years. Another portion of the survey shows why. It includes measures of their reading interest—or recoil. To the statement “I get a great deal of satisfaction from reading,” 53.3 percent disagree. And to “Over the years, books have broadened my horizons and stimulated my imagination,” 42.9 percent disagree. Fully 40.4 percent concur with “I don’t enjoy reading serious books and articles, and I only do it when I have to,” while 39.6 percent admit that “Books have never gotten me very excited.”
     
     
    Significantly, the questions don’t distinguish between in-class reading and personal reading, which means that two-fifths of the entering class can’t recollect a single book assigned by others or chosen by themselves that inspired them. Furthermore, the survey showed that students in four-year private institutions profess book interests not much more than those of students in community colleges. Wealthier students enroll in the former, but higher-income households don’t produce proportionately higher reading rates. Even though the bulk of their undergraduate training will involve “serious books and articles,” a sizable portion of both student populations detests them and reads them only under command. The connection between general intellectual interest and academic performance doesn’t register. Students aim high, but the attitudes undercut them and they don’t seem to realize it.
     
     
    The annual American Freshman Survey duplicates the findings for leisure reading rates, and because it dates back to 1966 it allows for longitudinal comparisons. To the question “During your last year in high school, how much time did you spend during a typical week reading for pleasure?” freshmen in 2005 answered as follows: “None” at 24.8 percent; “Less than one hour” at 26.1 percent; and “1-2 hours” at 23.8 percent. Add these three lowest times, covering 0-2 hours per week, and you get three-quarters of the entering class (74.7 percent) that reads outside of school for less than 17 minutes per day. Unbelievably, one-quarter of high school graduates who’ve gone on to college never read a word of literature, sports, travel, politics or anything else for their own enjoyment or illumination. But the percentage of students answering “None” has held steady for several years. In 2001, the figure was roughly the same. The big change happened in the seven years before 2001, when the trend shifted sharply downward. The “None” category rose from 19.6 percent in 1994 to 24.8 percent in 2001, a jump of 26 percent. The “Less than one” category went from 25.4 percent to 27.4 percent. In fact, every group slid downward. At the same time, during the 1990s, enrollments in higher education jumped 9 percent, with more high schoolers following loftier ambitions, but the intellectual habits that would sustain them on campus went the other way.
     
     
    With high school doing less and less to inspire off-campus reading, we can still hope that higher education sparks young people’s curiosity once they’ve departed the stultifying social climate of senior year. The National Survey of Student Engagement asks dozens of questions