Young people bored by the classics

. . . according to a 2007 report by the National Endowment for the Arts entitled To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence. At First Things, Eleanor Bourg Donlon reflects on its findings, citing television and classroom teachers themselves as part of the problem. Her diagnosis includes the following advice:

“With all of this said, there are three basic rules that must be established before one encounters Dickens. First, one ought not to read a three-volume novel expecting it to be short. Second, one should not expect the deep, dark secret of a Victorian thriller to be anything less than utterly predictable (this caution is reiterated, in particular, to a group of young students of my acquaintance who seriously expected the deep, dark secret of Wilkie Collins’ Woman in White to be that the villain was really a werewolf). And third, one should not read Dickens hoping he will not introduce a cast of thousands.”

Read her entire post, “Hard Times for Great Books“.