""I feel like I am tap dancing and having to read things aloud because there's no way that anyone read it the night before," Wilson admitted. "Even when you read it in class with them, there's so much they can't process about the very words that are on the page.""
""It's not even an inability to critically think," Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University told Fortune. "It's an inability to read sentences.""
""I'm not trying to lower my standards," Wilson said. "I just have to have different pedagogical approaches to accomplish the same goal.""
Reading among Americans has fallen substantially, with nearly half reporting no books read in 2025 and overall reading habits down about 40% over the last decade. Young adults aged 18 to 29 averaged 5.8 books in 2025, lagging behind older generations despite social media book communities. College professors report students unable to read or process sentences and long passages, prompting shifts in classroom practice. Instructors are using strategies such as reading passages aloud, line-by-line discussion, and repeated focus on single texts across a semester to build comprehension and prepare students for post-graduate expectations.
Read at Fortune
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