Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
The elite college students who can't read books
- Thread starter Khanah
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Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
How Teacher Evaluations Broke the University
One of my teachers, who studied overseas in the Arab countries and recently at Yale, mentioned how it's ridiculous that they expect students at colleges & universities to 'consume' hundreds of books in a short time. He went through the traditional Islamic methodology of teaching where you study one book for like a year, line by line, with a teacher that has a sanad for it. This way, you actually memorize and retain the material in the text.
Colleges and universities in our time are nothing more than glorified businesses that are meant to prepare you to become a worker. Ivy leagues are just clubs for the elite and wealthy.
Colleges and universities in our time are nothing more than glorified businesses that are meant to prepare you to become a worker. Ivy leagues are just clubs for the elite and wealthy.
I think there are as many western thinkers who have suggested or said directly that academia is a major sham of the 20th century.
To be fair, I think that's an apples to oranges comparison.
For example:
1. The traditional matn based learning has terse texts that need to be unpacked whereas the western books are less precise and unpack themselves so one line in a matn can be equivalent to a couple of pages in other textbooks
2. The textbooks in Western curricula are more like the sharh of a matn rather than the matn itself. And whilst a lesson may only consist of a few lines of the matn, it may cover multiple pages of a sharh so it's not as simple as going line by line only
3. Even in a traditional setting, people will read widely around the subject beyond what is being taught in class. You can see reading lists on this forum that probably have 100 books that a dars nizami student should read during his studies- which is then similar to reading lists provided in university too. So there isn't much of a difference in reality, it's just students in either system don't actually bother to read beyond the 'textbooks'. Presumably your teacher has actually read more than 20 or so books in his life related to his area of study and he wouldn't have done all of that reading under the supervision of a teacher, line by line. A western student should also be able to do the same with their field of study after reaching basic competence. It's just that they're incapable of independent study- hence the articles