[inaudible] >> welcome to the national association of scholars, my name is peter i am president of the national association of scholars. in 2009, a young man heading for seaside vacation in mexico kicked off an unusually heavy book, and 800 page on the life of an 18th century immigrant. fifty pages into the book the story took possession for 29-year-old, but emerged from his meat teen and turn off 2000 for extender hamilton is is now the hottest ticket on broadway, broadway play is widely known

for many things including this exact fidelity to the historical -- so each book may not be light reading. the right beach book can kick off a lot of sand. as it happens, one of the top five most assigned comment reading for college freshmen last year was also a book about the obstacles overcome by immigrants. it is the considerably shorter journey which offers a harrowing account of a 16-year-old honduras boy, drug user and the who makes his way through mexico and across the texas border at laredo. the book contrasts on several points, one is in wiki's journey is journey is written at a level appropriate for fifth-graders. and engaged by the independent.

welcome to the launch of the national association of scholars new addition, this edition covers the books assigned by colleges and universities to their incoming freshman classes in summer 2013 and 15. we have a splendid lineup of speakers to break the champagne bottle over beach books number five, a little later later we will hear from executive director of the nas who first conceived the study and reading program as a way to illuminate what colleges really value. she wrote the first report and establish the subject is something that professors and the general public take seriously. we'll also hear for the nas director of communication david randall who wrote this new report. he was phd from rockers and he

joins the national association of scholars in october 1. his first assignment was to synthesize our massive collection of data on the common reading programs into coherent analysis. he did good work in these last two months. will have time later on for questions and conversation that our keynote speaker, professor of english at emory university. and of course, senior editor. let me say how grateful i am that is in the launch of this report. it's one of the true gensler raging thieves of mediocrity. the threat to drown her public they shape the minds of the coming generation and it is a

matter of urgent concern as it is to the national association of scholars. professor can explain that much better than i. >> [applause]. thank you peter. thank you all for coming here. it is not happy news to speak about higher education and english teacher about some of the reading choices that are made by the colleges every year, what i'm going to do here is just lay out some of the background about why colleges even have these programs at all. and actually to give a little bit of sympathy for the problems that they are facing when they do assign these books and what they hope these programs which can run all year long, they select a book, they have the incoming students read it spend a few weeks and it's an

organized program, debate, bring assignments into the courses that are oriented to the book. it's very important to have the author attend and speak. it is a long process, not just the assignment of books for them to read over the summer. they wanted to be an extended experience. they want them to spend some time with this book. why? they graduate from high school, they have all summer long and admitted to this institution, why pylon this extra reading, the last thing they actually want to do is read books over the summer and will see that is one of the issues. so just briefly, there really are, i choose three major problems that schools face today. with their incoming students,

this actually is not so much the hyper selective but all the other it affects other institutions as well. one is that they read one book, and this is something that gets missed otherwise. there is no common reading now either in american life, in general, or in the school curriculum. i asked students in a class if i refer to a book, i teach american literature, huck finn, some may give me two or three out of the 20 students have read it. great gaps be. one of the most popular one is for high school reading are "to kill a mockingbird".

that is probably the most popular novel that is chosen in high school. more have read that but still only about 20% of the kids. this is a unique condition in american life of 4150 years in the schools the bible was the book that everybody knew. the bible was everywhere. it was in political discourse. it was in school reading books, it was in these lessons were people were running around with biblical verses. if you do not actively read it you heard it read at church, the dinner table, that, that was the book that was common to everyone. so i actually have my american literature students all read portions of genesis and leviticus. leviticus was very

important at the time of its founding. and the sermon on the mound so when i say to students present obama use the phrase -- does anybody know where that came from? so is not the sermon on the mount. that's later. >> i don't want to say seconds, but as the 20th century in public schools grew more secular. we did have at least for a few decades a fairly common core curriculum. in 11th or 12th grade, sometimes earlier grades where

you did have a set of american words that most students did read. the short stories and the scarlet letter by hawthorne, and huck finn, gatsby, hemingway. it was in the multiculturalism came along and the promise of multiculturalism was that we would have those works being read but we did have a much richer set of traditions as well. we would have more literature by women and minorities. authors. authors, this would actually build greater knowledge and so we would have an african it american literary tradition of people that would along with other traditions. that is not what happened. what happened was instead of having a bigger tradition that everybody would read portions

of, it was all over the place, teachers are largely allowed to select or school districts, select their own works. common core does not have a required reading list as a recommended reading list and it's largely ignored in the dacians of common core. we don't want to tell people what to read, that sounds like prescription weight don't want to do that. so this leaves us with a set of students who have not read a common book. the problem problem there is that people have not some cultural thing in common you can't build a culture out of them. in the report you can see they talk about community. and they are right, one of the ways in which you have a community as people have read the same thing.

they have some of the same cultural backgrounds. this is one thing, one problem, the lack of any common reading that the program tries to address. two, student don't like to read. they don't read very much on their own. not just they don't have a common reading kleiman in school or on their own, you might want to talk about harry potter. that is the one thing you can mention in class that most of the kids know but at this point maybe they just seen the movies. were pretty far beyond the publications in their lives. at this point. but they don't read very much on their own. i will give you some numbers on this. this is from the 2014 american freshman survey. a very large survey project and housed at ucla. he and housed at ucla. it goes back to the mid- 60s. here the rate for those students

to come in to college their first year students and these are four-year college, not these are four-year baccalaureate institutions. the rate of reading for pleasure, how often in a week do you read for pleasure? how pleasure? how many hours do you log? >> this is the largest cohorts and that 31% answered, none. nearly one third of them never read for pleasure. >> less than one hour, zero minutes to one hour, 24 percent, one, one to two hours a week 22%. you got that, were all all about three quarters of the students reading at negligible activity at best. , they just don't read many books on their own. at all. assign the common reading you

are entering a world in which you have to read books. college is going to ramp up the reading requirement on your own, you are not going to see a teacher every day who is going to go through a few pages with you at a time, you're going to have to be a self-starter, on your own, if you drop out the teacher does not care. sometimes they don't even know, and these larger classes there is no babysitting here, no parachute for you. so if you just disappear you have to accustom yourself to going through a 300 page book 200 page book and spending time with it. you have to live with it. over time, many teachers will say it's getting harder and harder to assign a book more than 200 pages long. it just doesn't go with the rhythms of their life. you can't read a few pages and then do this for a while, it

doesn't work at the college level. so the one book program tries to get them to be more book -ish, that's the intent. some people will say they don't read because i don't have time tree. because there have so many hours of homework. this is problem number three. this is where the american freshman survey comes in on homework time. this is what students report. not how many hours of homework they are signed, how much homework they actually do. studying homework hours per week. again, these are four-year college students. less than two hours per week, 29%. three - five hours per week, 27%. six-ten, 21%. now remember, sick - 10, that's

not much more than one hour per day. one hour per one hour per day all weekend long. two hours. now if you get below that less than an hour a day that 60% of a four-year college student. >> ..