Help Your Teen
Educators and parents are getting too far away from encouraging a good liberal arts education, thinking it is a waste of time. Many educators and parents want students to go after high-paying jobs in business, science and technology. Now there is a glut of business, science and technology graduates in the market for jobs. “[E]mployers have repeatedly said that they want to hire people with a good liberal arts education,” states Denby—“people who can think, judge and express themselves; they want people who can follow complicated instructions, talk in a meeting, understand fellow workers. They can buy robots.”
Parents, one of the best things you can do for your teenagers is to encourage them to develop a love for, and the habit of, reading print materials. “[R]eading strengthens perception, judgment and character; it creates understanding of other people and oneself, maybe kindliness and wit, and certainly the ability to endure solitude, both in the common sense of empty-room loneliness and the cosmic sense of empty-universe loneliness,” writes Denby with conviction. His book Lit Up is a very interesting study of three top schools that have adopted the same thinking about reading books.
Evidence is growing that no human being can derive the same benefits from digital reading.
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