Wednesday.....Culture.....Summer Reading List

Fox News reports that A new study by the National Association of Scholars has found that 70 percent of the summer reading books assigned  to incoming college freshman in the U. S. show a liberal bias and are not academically challenging. Surveyed were 290 colleges and the responses were categorized with multiculturalism, immigration and racism in first, followed by environmentalism, animal rights and food. The conclusion of the report was stated as more of the same. Conservative books comprised only 2 percent of the reading list. Pop culture trumped core curriculum. The classics were virtually ignored with no Shakespeare but a smattering of classics like Frankenstein, The Communist Manifesto and Walden. Some educators fought back claiming conservative bias in the study. I decided to look at the study myself, the schools surveyed and the books recommended. The Pathetic World Of College Summer Recommended Reading comes to mind as a good book title. There is no getting away from the liberal and progressive influences of Higher Education, but on the flip side, these institutions may be finding it increasingly difficult to apply the term tabula rasa to their incoming freshman classes. Truth will win out if given equal time.  Our nephew recently graduated from high school and will matriculate to a college whose summer reading book is Pat Barker's Regeneration written in 1991. Barker admits that the book is an anti-war novel , but maybe not in the typical sense. World War I is the venue while social class issues and homosexuality are also themes. I gave my nephew The Heritage Guide To The Constitution as a graduation gift.