The New York Times Online recently featured an article on college-level summer reading programs. The article, "Summer Reading Programs Gain Momentum for Students About to Enter College", details a growing trend at colleges and universities to include, in freshman college preparations, a common reading assignment. The article identifies a common theme of selected books from around the nation: "books that are readable, short, engaging, cheap. Often, it helps if the book is a best seller dealing with some aspect of diversity, some multicultural encounter..."
Damn! I hate it when anything I am associated with is so blatantly stereotypical (except, of course, my mini-van, because I LOVE my mini-van). Anyway, the above description does a fine job of capturing The Pickup. I think what I find so interesting is why these books "dealing with some aspect of diversity, some multicultural encounter" are often chosen. I believe it is because the undergraduate years are typically when most students gain a global awareness. Campuses reflect global diversity (see Lance's previous post on the demographic breakdown of Cornell students) and, for many, university is their first experience with people of certain cultures and ethnicities.
Yet, I wonder if all this preparation is necessary for the upcoming generation of college students. My experience is that today's students come to university with a global perspective eons ahead of the past generation of students. Could it be that this global perspective is so new for baby boomers and generation Xers that we assume that the millennials could not possibly possess it at such a young age; and, therefore, it is our responsibility to cultivate this understanding in new college students?
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