Special: The Article That Started It All — Rose Horowitch on Reading, Education, and What's at Stake
In this special minisode, a kind of proto-episode of the Ink Over AI [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO2Fxo943NBZTPxl_T-BRxr9NNn3JAfpS]series, Terry [http://www.mostwritersarefans.com] sits down with Rose Horowitch, staff writer at The Atlantic, to discuss her widely-read article "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books." What begins as a conversation about struggling college readers quickly opens up into something much larger: a wide-ranging diagnosis of why students across all levels have such a complicated relationship with reading, critical thinking, and the humanities.
Rose and Terry trace the roots of the problem from multiple angles. Technology and social media earn their share of the blame, not just because they compete for students' time and attention, but because they've quietly reshaped what students expect from any given moment. When everything in your feed is instantly engaging, sitting with a difficult or slow-moving text starts to feel genuinely unbearable. But Rose is careful to note that anxiety about young people and reading isn't new; she cites someone raising the same concerns back in 1979, and that what makes the current moment distinct is the convergence of several concrete, trackable shifts happening all at once.
Among those shifts: the lasting academic fallout of the pandemic, a decades-long pivot in educational policy toward informational texts and standardized testing at the expense of full novels, and a broader cultural devaluation of the humanities in favor of more "marketable" fields like STEM. Terry brings his own perspective as a public school English teacher in rural West Virginia, reflecting on the gap between the populations Rose was reporting on, elite college students, and his own students, and finding more overlap than you might expect. He shares the sobering experience of students telling him that listening to an audiobook in class was the first book they'd ever finished.
The conversation also touches on what's actually at stake. Drawing on her reporting, including a conversation with neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, Rose makes the case that deep reading isn't just a nice habit; it's tied to critical thinking, civic engagement, and the ability to hold complexity in your mind. In an era of eroding institutional trust and easy misinformation, that feels more urgent than it might have in previous generations. The two close on a more personal note, with Rose sharing what got her hooked on reading as a kid, her current attempt to make it through War and Peace, and a brief discussion of diversifying the literary canon as one potential path toward re-engaging students who have historically felt left out of the humanities.
Topics Covered:
* The Atlantic article that sparked the Ink Over AI series and how this interview served as its origin point
* How social media and smartphones are reshaping students' attention and expectations
* The lasting academic impact of pandemic-era schooling
* How No Child Left Behind and Common Core shifted classroom focus away from full novels
* The cultural pressure on students to pursue STEM over the humanities
* What deep reading actually does for the brain, per neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf
* The challenge of motivating students when traditional tools like grades lose their leverage
* Diversifying the literary canon as a potential re-entry point for disengaged students
* Rose's own reading origin story and her current read: War and Peace
Guest Bio: Rose Horowitch is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers education and culture. Her article "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/]" sparked widespread conversation among educators, academics, and readers about the state of literacy and the humanities in America.
Edited by Nena King.
