Opinion

Op-ed: Moby Dick? Who’s that?

If it's possible to graduate college without reading a book, something is wrong.

Posted on Dec. 08, 2008, at 12:00 a.m.

Walking back from the Recreation and Fitness Center on Monday night, I overheard a student say, “If I blow this one off, I’ll have made it through high school and college without ever reading a book.” He said this proudly to his friend, also a tall twenty-something in basketball shorts.

I will admit my bias. The only reason I go to the Rec Center is so I can read the latest editions of the New Yorker on the treadmill at an uphill walk. Nonetheless, how does a person make it through eight years of upper-level education without reading a book? I admit that I may have skimmed through “The Old Man and The Sea” in senior English, but this is a little over the top.

Last month, USA Today published that one in five college seniors and one in four first-years frequently go to class unprepared – and that most of them get A’s.

It works. Lazy students who just don’t care to do the work can get through the system with ease.

Sure, maybe “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” won’t get you your first after-college job, but I hope my future lawyers or gynecologists read a book instead of trying to slide through with the least amount of work possible – not so they could recite prose to me, but because it takes stamina and discipline to get through hundreds of pages. People with those skills are the type of people who should be getting college degrees and making it into the professional workforce.

Financial Aid is sucked dry, scholarships are shrinking, if not evaporating, and Gov. John Baldacci asked the University of Maine to cut its budget by $5.3 million. In times like these, maybe it is time for universities to raise their standards. UMaine’s freshman class is bigger every year. Maybe we should be getting smarter rather than bigger.

If UMaine and its faculty raised standards to force students to prove they cared enough to do the work required of them, maybe we’d be a university other universities look up to. Maybe we could be admired, and maybe we would have the most dedicated, hard-working students. Maybe those students would have enough money through Financial Aid to go to school, while the slackers got cut.

It sounds like I’m blaming the faculty and UMaine, but when it comes down to it, this is college and no one can make a student do the work it will take for him or her to be prepared for his or her future career. But why would someone want to cheat themselves out of Poe’s guilty conscience, Winston Smith’s struggle against his 1984 government, Salinger’s angst or Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov’s insanity? It is difficult to develop a worldview or insight into society and life if you don’t consider the greats who came before us. Students who don’t read make for less effective citizens and weigh our university down – all while cheating themselves of a full education and endless adventures and knowledge.

Heather Steeves would rather be drifting “Into the Wild” on a raft with “Huck Finn” in “1984″ . but she doubts you’re reading this anyway.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.