Semi-Dorky Poll: Summer Reading

Students at what level? For undergrads, I would have to say menace, but only because it doesn't take into account what else a student may have to do over a summer. If a student is free, then summer reading can be good for enhancing study.

It should not be required though, so that it doesn't detract from better opportunities like REUs. I've attended a REU every summer I've been eligible in my undergraduate education, and I wouldn't trade these two (soon to be three) summers for any other available program.

That being said, I've always wanted to read many physics books. Nowadays, physics undergraduates (at least the ones I know) don't read books written by physicists as Richard Feynman and Theodore Welton recollect doing (Physics Today, Feb. 2007). Welton recalls going through papers and books written by Dirac and other such influential physicists as an undergraduate - dusty copies of compilations of papers by Einstein and Heisenberg sit on my shelf, but I have not yet found time to read them.

I would love to spend a summer just going through all three volumes of the Feynman Lectures, also sitting on my shelf, but there's just no time. Perhaps when I'm in graduate school... perhaps not. Perhaps I'll have time once I get tenure. :P

I'm kind of down on the concept.

I've always been a reader myself. Read lots of stuff. The summer I had to read "The Count of Monte Christo" before school was great, because that book was a lot of fun. On the other hand, when I had to read "The Scarlet Letter," which I found very difficult to get through, it *reduced* the total amount of reading I did. Partly because I procrastinated reading that, but felt too guilty to read anything else until I'd finished that, and partly because it just took so long to get through.

I don't like the idea of kids having to read something they wouldn't choose to read, and perhaps thereby getting turned off to reading. On the other hand, I do like the idea of trying to get kids turned on to read.

If there's going to be summer reading, by all means pick something that the vast majority of kids are going to *like*. It may not be something that stuffed shirts who talk about declining education would approve of as suitably erudite, but better read something than nothing, and better give the kids something fun to read over the summer.

And, there should be at most one book for kids to read over the summer. If a summer reading list for school is six or seven books long, that's just ridiculously overwhelming. Not that seven is a lot of books to read over the summer -- I read a whole lot more during summers in high school -- but it's way too many books not chosen by the kids to require them to read.

-Rob

I much prefer to give reading suggestions to students who ask for guidance on their free summers. Or in my case it is more likely music listening suggestions, as I just gave on Saturday to a student who is around for the summer.

Threat or menace?

Well, both, of course. The kids who hate to read will grow up to be non-reading adults who were scarred for life by the experience; the kids who turn into life-long readers might have a bump of irritation that they were forced to read something in particular that wasn't freely chosen.

But the second group will get over it. After a thousand books, they'll scarcely recall which book was assigned and which book was freely chosen that summer.

I give students stuff to read all the time, and in most of my majors classes they have to do a 10 page "book thingie", where they don't review the book per se, but tell me what they learned from it, and what was cool/not cool. I started this cause folks would turn up as junior physics majors and say they wanted to change majors. "Well why did you go into physics?" -- "I used to read all this cool stuff about black holes and strings in Scientific American and such" ---"Do you still do that?"---"No man, I got to work all those damn homework problems".

So I make them find something THEY want to read, everybody does the 10 pages, it generally just raises the curve, and they seem to love it. Both that its something different, but mainly that THEY GET TO CHOOSE SOMETHING THEY WANT TO LEARN ABOUT. Its pretty powerful.

Summer reading that has some flexibility to it works much better than "thou shalt read this, and by god love it..." approach IMHO. If they are not doing summer research, or for high school, just something to keep the rust off goes a long way I think.

As far as Calgary, I had a 3 hour wind delay in Chicago, and got here on Wed. at 8 Calgary time instead of 5, but my friends that came the night before were on approach to Calgary Tuesday night around 7, got turned away, circled for an hour, went to Spokane where there were no empty gates, so they just sat on the plane most of the night and arrived at Calgary at 6AM.

Personally, I can't ever remember being told to read anything over the summer holidays, etc. Its a shame because then I would have the perfect excuse when my mum complained that I wasn't outside playing, but reading instead. Of course watching the TV all morning would have been more difficult to explain away...

Required summer reading lists for students

wow

i never had one ....i really had to think about that because im a serious bookaholic and would probably rather read than eat ....but not a single one of my teachers from 1st grade through high school ever assigned one or even suggested one and i know that i probably would have killed to get one

i also never got the "what i did on my summer vacation", essay either