Report Says Most Students at Our Most Elite Universities are Incapable of Reading an Entire Book

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There have been times in our culture when being considered "bookish" meant you were a social outcast. When "bookworm" was used as a pejorative term, used to describe and anti-social loner. From this Burgess Meredith character in the most celebrated Twilight Zone episode ever. To the first person speaker in the Simon and Garfunkel song "I Am an Island," claiming he has his books and poetry to protect him from having to socialize with others.  To the Tri-Lambs in Revenge of the Nerds.

Non-readers have often been considered the cool ones, even in academic settings. The ones who were too busy being popular, scoring coeds, and throwing awesome parties to crack a book. Think Delta House. Or the Alpha Betas in Nerds. Or Thornton Melon, who hired Kurt Vonnegut to write an essay on a Kurt Vonnegut book:

Well that is the case no more. The current crop of Zoomer college students aren't reading not because they're having too much fun, or scoring too many touchdowns and too sorority sisters. They're avoiding all forms of literature because book are so scary and intimidating. Basically the Monster Book from Harry Potter:

NY Post - Several university professors expressed concerns to the Atlantic about students who come to college unable to read full-length books.

Assistant editor Rose Horowitch spoke to several teachers from elite schools like Columbia, Georgetown and Stanford, who each described the phenomenon of students being overwhelmed by the prospect of reading entire books.

Columbia University humanities professor Nicholas Dames described feeling “bewildered” when a first-year student told him that she had never been required to read a full book at her public high school.

“My jaw dropped,” Dames said.

Some professors … described them as “now more exceptions” rather than the rule, with others “shutting down” when facing difficult texts.

“Daniel Shore, the chair of Georgetown’s English department, told me that his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet,” Horowitch wrote. … [T]hey don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.” 

A quick search will tell you that the tuition for Columbia, Georgetown and Stanford ranges from $58,000 to $64,000. And parents are paying that so the people who will someday inherit their estates can be surrounded by adults who have never read a book that didn't involve Waldo hiding in plain sight. And not just a small percentage. Not just Bluto, Ogre or Melon. This is no longer the exceptions, but the rule. 

Listen, I'm not about to pass myself off as a Classical Literature snob. I'd be lying if I said I've read To Kill a Mockingbird or Wuthering Heights or Mark Twain. I'm currently halfway through Aldous Huxley's dystopian Brave New World, but lean much more toward historical non-fiction and biographies. But it doesn't matter what genre you're into, as long as you read. Short of a crippling learning disability like dyslexia, it's appalling that anyone would reach adulthood without being at least somewhat well read. Without getting into specifics, someone told me they're friends with someone who said she's read one book in her entire life. And it was a celebrity tell-all. If a friend told me that, I'd break up with them on the spot and block their number. I mean, what do you do at the beach or relaxing on a vacation for fucks sake? 

I've heard it said that when the first fiction book became popular in England, they were cheap, mass-produced true crime dramas. And they gave us the term Penny Dreadfuls. It's believed that as an unintended benefit, the general public became more empathetic and understanding toward one another. The reason being that really for the first time in their lives, the readers were placed inside the head of another person. Reading someone else's thoughts. Seeing their emotion state described on the page, and so on. It was a great civilizing force throughout society. And regarded as a pure good. 

But even if you only see higher education as a jobs program, something to put on your resume so you can start a career, would you ever hire someone to perform an important task in your company if they were "overwhelmed" by The Great Gatsby? Scared by the very thought of getting through a Stephen King bestseller? More afraid of Bonfire of the Vanities than actual bonfires? Or vanity? 

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So great job, America. We've come up with yet another way for yet another generation to get its collective dick kicked into the dirt by the rest of the world. While Japan, Australia, South Korea, all your Scandinavian countries and China are reading circles around us, we're sending "scholars" off to our best colleges who are intimidated by the idea of having to turn to Page 1 of The Diary of Anne Frank and consider 50 Shades of Grey to be James Joyce. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to my book. And put all my money into gold and silver like they tell you to when you watch old people TV. Because I'm not relying on this generation of illiterate chickenshits to take care of me in my golden years.