Mark Gottlieb and Shilo Brooks on Why Reading Matters

About this episode

Mark Gottlieb and Shilo Brooks discuss the decline of reading culture among elite college students and the importance of great books in education and citizenship.

In 2024, the Atlantic ran a splashy feature titled "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books." Professors at the Ivy League and at other elite universities reported that their students, among the most credentialed young people in the country, could no longer make their way through a whole book. One Columbia professor described his bewilderment when a student told him she had never once been assigned a full book in high school. At Tikvah we work with hundreds of educators, and they have observed that it's not only the skill of reading that is in decline; it's also the culture around reading, the patience and attention and habits of the mind that really important books demand. That is where Rabbi Mark Gottlieb begins the conversation you are about to hear. Rabbi Gottlieb has been a guest on the Tikvah Podcast before. He is a senior adviser and treasured colleague at Tikvah, and the head of school at the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the most recent Marom conference, the annual Tikvah gathering of Jewish day-school leaders, he sat down with Shilo Brooks for a session called "A Republic of Readers: Why Great Books Make Good Citizens." Dr…

People in this episode

Guests: Mark Gottlieb, Shilo Brooks

Topics covered

• reading culture
• education
• great books
• Ivy League
• student literacy
• Jewish education

Keywords

• reading
• literacy
• education
• great books
• Ivy League
• student engagement
• Jewish education

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tikvah, Columbia, Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School, George W. Bush Presidential Center

Books & works: The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books

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