"Overzealous First-Year Reads Most of Summer Reading Assignment" said the headline in The Herald's less hard-hitting and significantly less funny competitor, The Brown Noser. Ha ha, good one! Actually doing the summer reading assignment!
Then again, maybe when a policy has become a complete joke, it's time to reassess.
Mandatory summer reading was instated in 2007, my freshman year. The class of 2011's assignment was called "How Proust Can Change Your Life," a self-help book on how to become a sad, asthmatic, Jewish, homosexual shut-in with mommy issues. And, oh yes, Proust was arguably the greatest writer of the 20th century, but that's not the sort of thing you can learn from a mass-market paperback (eternal fame and literary genius, yours for only $10.08 on Amazon.com!).
As exactly the sort of overzealous first-year who actually slogged through the entirety of "How Proust Can Change Your Life," I can assure you that my Brown experience would have been just as valuable without Alain de Botton's insights. Maybe I'm biased because I didn't enjoy the book. (Neither did most other people in my seminar, despite the able efforts of our professor.) Other assignments, like the class of 2012's "The Places in Between" and the class of 2014's "The Dew Breaker" look significantly more interesting to me.
But that's the crux of the problem. Whether a book looks interesting to me, or you, or Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, shouldn't matter. Forcing the entire freshman class to read and discuss one book may have its uses, but it's completely antithetical to Brown's philosophy, and it's a bad way to introduce the newest members of the University to who we are and who we want to be.
Students are attracted to this school because of the New Curriculum and the accompanying promise that we won't be forcibly molded into so-called "perfect students." High school seniors who believe that someone else can dictate what knowledge is personally valuable for them can apply to Columbia, the University of Chicago or any number of excellent schools with a strong core curriculum. But that's not what Brown is supposed to be about.
According to the University admissions Web page on "Our Philosophy," "The curriculum should encourage individuality, experimentation and the integration and synthesis of different disciplines." Does summer reading, which seems trite and useless even in high school, fit any of those goals?
Let's examine a case. In The Herald's 2007 summer issue, my fellow '11ers gave "Proust" such enthusiastic praise as "looks kind of interesting," and "it's only one book," while professors and administrators expressed fears that no one would actually read it ("Summer reading, so far, gets positive reviews," July 15, 2007).
Their fears, at least according to the article, were misplaced, but for all the wrong reasons. The then-prefrosh interviewed said that they would read the book and thought others would too, but because they were "intimidated" and didn't "want to come in looking like an idiot," not because they had any intellectual investment in it. Doesn't exactly sound like it's promoting individuality, experimentation or even thought. Period.
And then there's the seminar experience. Proust, Afghanistan, evolution and Haitian refugees are all topics worthy of significant study and reflection, but someone stewing in resentment over the choice of book is unlikely to get there (not like this is from personal experience or anything). Moreover, the presence of that sullen someone, not to mention the inevitable ingratiating suck-up and the know-it-all That Guy, will only detract from the discussion for those who actually did enjoy the book — especially in the first week of freshman year, when every interaction is fraught with meaning and judgment.
Thankfully, the administration has discontinued the devious and unfair practice of screening first-years' "private" essays to their advisers on the summer reading to pick out poor writers. And if there's one upside to summer reading, it's that it provides a surefire conversation starter during those awkward first few days of freshman year. However, it would be a lot better if said conversation didn't center around how much everyone hates the book. Let first-years find their own interests and their own voices, rather than what they think professors want to hear. That will teach them a lot more about what it means to be a Brown student than any book could.
Former Opinions Editor Sarah Rosenthal '11 is still in search of the time she lost doing her summer reading.
