Either Start Reading or Expect a Struggle on the SAT

I’m warning you now: this is going to be a rant.

I’ve been in the test prep field for long enough now to be able to have seen about two complete high school student body turnovers. Amusingly enough, when I started prepping students for the SAT I was only a year or two out of college and still had a pretty decent sense of what was happening on the high school front.

Now, I don’t want to pull some sort of “in my day” spiel, but you should know that when I was in high school we didn’t have computers at the house and internet access was extremely limited (and, frankly, we really had no idea why we’d want to use it anyway). That being said, I’ll also admit that we watched a fair amount of television. Nevertheless, we spent a good deal of time reading recreationally. Anais Nin, On the Road, Jonathan Edwards–you name it and someone we knew was reading it. And now, well over a decade later, I will bet serious money on the following statement:

Kids–even the “smart” kids–just aren’t reading like they used to.

It’s a problem.

In the past week alone I’ve had to clarify the meaning of the following words for students hoping to attend Ivy League schools: timid, pedagogical, somber, polarized, consummate, equitable, and steadfast. [There are more but I'll spare you.] In no way do I mean to be condescending or to in any way poke fun at my students; instead I mean to Sound The Alarm.

In the world of educational chatter, “teaching to the test” and the limitations of what one can glean about a students’ intellect or college readiness from standardized testing are major issues–and a fair ones at that. However, I think we’re finally at the point where it’s not about the test anymore.

I don’t want to hear another word about how deeply unfair the SAT is until you can show me a culture of high school students who read quality literature for fun on a daily basis. Show me students who turn off YouTube and Hulu (and  Halo, for that matter) in favor of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell or The Kite Runner. Show me students who are working through House of Leaves for the fun of it (to date, I’ve had one dare to do so and, frankly, he loved it…. and now he’s at Williams) and I’ll show you a legion of college applicants that aren’t doing battle with the reading comprehension section on the SAT.

As a tutor I spend more time than ever teaching the rudiments of critical thinking–meaning, I spend many hours explaining one, the meanings of words, and two, why it’s so important that we be able to articulate definitions. (It’s quite difficult to compare the meaning and intention of two words–the building blocks of answer choices–when all you can say about each of them is “oh, you know, I know what it means, but it’s just so hard to say it!”)

I’m seeing fewer and fewer students knock the SAT Reading out of the ballpark and I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I don’t think it’s because I’ve spontaneously become a lousy teacher. So, teachers, parents, and my tutor colleagues: please, please, encourage your students to read more than you ever have before. And students, you heard it here first: if you don’t start reading challenging literature on a regular basis and discipline yourself to learn and articulate the meanings of new words as you come across them, your SAT score will suffer.

It’s as simple as that.

Tagged as: critical thinking, education, PSAT preparation, reading, SAT, test prep, vocabulary