BOOKS STILL MATTER

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE

BOOKS STILL MATTER

By Hunt Lyman

Hunt Lyman

As readers of this column know, I often champion the benefits of technological advances.

While social media and artificial intelligence (AI) present significant challenges and dangers, I wouldn’t trade the conveniences of modern tech for the typewriters with sticky keys I used in college. However, as we embrace these innovations, we must not let shiny new tools overshadow one of humanity’s most transformative and enduring technologies: books.

My concern arises from several recent articles, particularly one in the October issue of The Atlantic titled, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” with the subtitle, “To Read a Book in College, It Helps to Have Read a Book in High School.”

In the piece, Rose Horowitz explores a growing trend: students at prestigious universities struggle to follow the details and plot of longer works, such as “Pride and Prejudice.” The reason? Many have never read a book of comparable length or complexity.

Horowitz points to multiple causes, including a shift in middle and high school curricula driven by standardized testing. These tests focus on short passages and poems, leaving little room for full-length novels.

I’ve seen this trend first hand when I ask high school students what they’re currently studying. Far too often, they struggle to name a major work they’ve read in the past year.

Certainly many reasons are rooted in the many screens that now fill all our lives, particularly those of young people. The human brain is stimulated by the light, sounds, and movement of devices; opening a book does not entice us immediately or in the same way.

I endorse the linguist S.I. Hayakawa’s belief that reading books provides unique benefits by fostering empathy and critical thinking, ultimately leading to a deeper life.

Books have profoundly enriched my life; they help me grasp experiences and viewpoints far removed from my reality. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t immersed in at least one full-length book. For me, reading is an essential part of my daily life.

Scout Finch, the narrator of Harper Lee’s 1960 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” captures this sentiment when she reflects on her own reading: “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

I’m fortunate to work at a school where free-choice reading is prioritized, from early childhood through adolescence. Becoming a reader takes time and pages; just as mileage matters for runners, there are no shortcuts to building skilled, passionate readers.

We must ensure that the wonders of technology—be it AI, the internet, or any digital innovation—don’t overshadow the miraculous power of books.

Through the simple technology of black marks on white pages, we can share in the thoughts and emotions of people who may live thousands of miles away, or have lived thousands of years ago, or may even inhabit entirely fictional worlds.

How extraordinary that we can form deep connections with characters born in an author’s imagination and bond with others who love the same characters and stories. Books connect real people in deep ways that transcend time and space.

While I marvel at AI’s ability to write a Shakespearean sonnet about a hamburger, I also know that AI can never generate Shakespeare’s deep insights.

To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shakespeare will never be made by the absorption of Shakespeare. Books remain our most timeless tool for understanding and advancing the human experience.

Hunt Lyman is academic dean at The Hill School in Middleburg and has been teaching English since 1984.