When my dear colleague Martin Lenz sent me a link to Hilarius Bookbinder’s blog post “The average college student today”, I immediately knew this would be a lamentation about how students nowadays couldn’t care less, wouldn’t make the effort, and simply didn’t read. Not that I have psychic abilities about blog posts. But Martin and I have an ongoing discussion about the topic of literacy and the so-called reading crisis. When I clicked the link to read the post, I was slightly concerned. Martin had only commented that “things sounded quite bad”. Well, what sounded very bad to me was – for starters – the title of this blog post. Why would a professor even write about the average college student? The average college student is merely a statistical construct, not to be found in any classroom. In my fifteen years of teaching experience at six German universities spanning institutions such as the FernUniversität in Hagen, LMU München and HU Berlin, I have yet to encounter a single homogenous study group. And labelling those with whom one seeks to engage in meaningful academic work as average seems condescending to me. I find it odd to point out something so obvious, but one simply cannot expect cooperation or trust from people one does not respect. And students must trust their academic teachers that the challenging material they ask them to read really is worthwhile. I, personally, am not sure whether I would take reading suggestions from someone who comes across as condescending and uninterested in what matters to me. Would our average professor (as Martin called Bookbinder in his reply)? I absolutely don’t think so.

Hilarius Bookbinder claims to write as a concerned, even alarmed professor. And if it’s true that students read way less than a decade ago – and it very well might be – then that is a serious matter. But Bookbinder adopts a rather resentful tone and weaves students’ identities into his somewhat unclear reasoning. Suddenly, it’s not about reading skills anymore, but about students’ culinary preferences. They seem to love buffalo wings, while the professor clearly despises them. Just a fun fact? Not at all. Bookbinder repeatedly returns to it. Actually, he completely lost me at his feverish choice of a picture to illustrate his article. It features a young woman reading a menu, seemingly contemplating that the buffalo wings look good. The woman depicted has brown eyes and curly brown hair. I might not have considered her ethnicity, if Bookbinder hadn’t previously published another article, questioning why white men no longer want to go to college. And I think that’s exactly what this is all about. Add a touch of some classism – buffalo wings are often seen as working-class food – and it becomes evident that this is not truly about learners’ reading skills, but rather about the individuals themselves, who might be female, first-generation academics and come from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

I consider it part of our duty as academic teachers to stay open and curious about our learners. We can’t expect them to be just like us. Of course they have their own unique cultural references. They even listen to, god forbid, Taylor Swift! There’s by the way a chance that they actually do read a lot. And there is statistical evidence that women read more than men. Let’s stay curious about today’s students and start a new conversation about literacy, rather than becoming bitter about a generation that might not share our preferences. If we create a non-judgmental space for students’ diverse cultural references and interests, they could eventually come around for some shared reading practice and open up for the books we want to introduce them to.

Irmtraud Hnilica