Ever since my mother bought the book, “Teaching Your Baby to Read,” I was destined to be a reader. I was the girl who every week brought home a big stack of books from the town library. Today, piles of books surround me at work and at home.
I track my reading on Goodreads, and I try to read on average a book a week. That does not mean I read a book every week — during vacations the pace picks up, and during busy times on campus, the pace slows down — but the goal is always 52 books a year. I even have a T-shirt that reads, “A day without reading is like … Just kidding — I have no idea!” During COVID, I read even more, as other forms of recreation and entertainment were limited.
I used to try to alternate: a mystery novel (my guilty pleasure), a serious nonfiction or fiction book, a book related to work (higher education or Hawaiian history and culture). In the years of COVID, however, I found myself escaping to the first category more and more. And I tend to start many books at once. For example, I’ve been reading “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” for a couple of years now, and Goodreads reminds me of this at least once a week. “Do you want to post a progress update?” it asks me. At the same time, other algorithms on other websites keep suggesting more books for me to read, based on what I have already read or what I have purchased. I will never catch up.
I recognize that many of our students at UH-Hilo did not grow up with the privilege that I did; some were not able to take the time to read. So many have jobs and family obligations and spending an hour a day with a book would be a luxury. We also have a rich abundance of outdoor recreation on our island that draws people to the beach or the mountains rather than to the library. And then there are all the digital temptations — YouTube and TikTok and countless other apps that suck us in and allow us to lose track of time, often with very little edification.
Whatever the reason, much has been made of the fact that the generation entering college now is not a generation of readers. Information comes in small bits, and we are bombarded by so much information that we struggle to sift through it all. Yet, reading is key to success at the university. Reading is still the primary mode of communicating information on university campuses, even though studies have shown that the students coming through our doors for the last several years are often more comfortable learning by doing.
Even at the college level there are students who struggle with reading, especially in specialized areas, so some faculty have taken up strategies such as Reading Apprenticeship, whereby the professor creates a social and personal connection for the students with the reading material. If we take a look at book clubs, for example, they turn reading into a social activity that binds people together around a book. The more we share, the more we gain proficiency. Professors can share their own reading journeys with students. Not where they are today, but how they got there. If a student came to me with an article from a physics journal, for example, how would I make sense of it? If we demonstrate our own journeys, how we take things apart and put them back together in order to understand, then our students can also see themselves as readers going through a similar process.
The more we read, the better we write, another essential skill for college. Of course, we can supplement the books with hands-on activities, which bring them to life in ways that are more meaningful to some students, but in the end, reading is still at the core. Reading helps us think more clearly, remember more accurately, and some argue that it even reduces stress.
College-level reading can be hard, but just like physical exercise, the effort will pay a lifetime of dividends.
Bonnie D. Irwin is chancellor of the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Her column appears monthly in the Tribune-Herald.
