Reading Sustains Academic Momentum During Summer Months

To the Editor:
Recent high school graduates, especially those headed for college, have had their fill of adult advice. I have attended six graduation ceremonies this spring, and not one featured speaker cautioned the graduates about how to handle the empty days of summer facing them before college.
Summer encourages academic sloth. Backsliding is the norm during the dog days of summer. What intellectual momentum a senior high schooler may have developed prepping for college acceptance erodes easily during this wait period prior to college start-up time. Keeping that momentum current and viable will facilitate a smoother transition from high school spoon-feeding to college ladling.
The process which will sustain academic momentum during the summer is a simple one – reading. Many parents have told me that it is easier to get junior out of bed at noon during the summer than it is to get him to open a book. It’s easier to have him tidy up his room than to have him reach for his library card. Allowing one’s reading to go on the back burner, if one is a legitimate college prospect, is not only foolish, but also ruinous. Research shows that the inability to keep up with the assigned reading demands in college is the primary cause of freshman failure, not booze and drugs, nor home sickness, nor the wrong academic major.
No athlete among this crop of graduates who is aspiring to collegiate sports would ever allow his athletic skills to languish in limbo during the summer. He would risk heat prostration to remain in top form. Apparently coaches appear to have done a more convincing job encouraging daily practice during the summer than we have done as teachers urging “scholars” to read.
Parents will do anything to make sure their children succeed on a college level. We’ll decorate and furnish dorm rooms. We’ll fatten debit accounts. We’ll buy a new, expensive computer. We’ll find a parking spot for them off campus where freshmen are not allowed cars on campus. Rarely, however, will we require or demand that we see some semblance of a most important skill – reading. Every high school owes us an accurate report on a kid’s reading prowess upon graduation. Shaky readers will garner shaky results. Most of us are in the dark when it comes to an accurate assessment of our grad’s reading ability.
Allowing your freshly-minted high school grad to enjoy all the goodies summer offers without finding time for reading is a recipe for academic disaster.