The Books We Read in High School (Part 1)

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Recently, professors at elite colleges told Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch that their students don’t read whole books anymore. They blamed cell phones, standardized tests, and extracurriculars, and they mostly agreed that the shift began in high school. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we make the case for reading books, one memory at a time. We talk to Horowitch, and we hear from several Atlantic writers about the books they read in high school that stuck with them, and how their views of these books and the characters in them changed over time. Read Horowitch’s reporting here: “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” Share understanding this holiday season. For less than $2 a week, give a year-long Atlantic subscription to someone special. They’ll get unlimited access to Atlantic journalism, including magazine issues, narrated articles, puzzles, and more. Give today at TheAtlantic.com/podgift. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:49.6	Reading is just so central to my mind to what it means to be human.
0:54.8	Whatever you do when you read fiction is commit a small act of empathy.
0:59.1	You know, you think about situations that are not like your own.
1:02.0	You think about people whose lives are not like your own.
1:04.4	You know, of course there are ways to build empathy and curiosity about the world
1:07.4	that aren't sitting down and reading a full-fledged novel. But the novel's
1:12.5	proven to be a pretty reliable way of building up the brain and building up, you know,
1:17.9	the ability to think about a world outside of your own. So it would be sad if that went away
1:22.8	forever. I just think what a magical time your teenage years are to form those kinds of impressions,
1:29.3	and books have been the reliable way to do that.
1:33.3	So it's alarming to me that kids would be cut off from that voluntarily or through some other force.
1:40.3	I can't imagine having lived through adolescence without that as part of my life.
1:47.8	I can't imagine life without having had these different worlds in which I could lose myself
	...

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