Dear Professors, 

As the new semester gets into full swing, I have a simple but vital request for you: Start teaching your classes as if your students have done all the readings. If you already do this, great! But to those of you who don’t, it’s time. 

As someone who does their best to do all their readings, I’ve noticed a pattern developing in some of my courses in which a large portion of class time is dedicated to conveying the content and ideas of the assigned reading to those who may not have done it. I’ve been in more than one class where students who’ve taken it in the past have told me, “You don’t ever have to do the reading. The professor just teaches it in class.” This is the opposite of what I want out of my courses, and I’m not the only one who has noticed — and been bothered by — this trend. The vast majority of the students that I talked to about this echoed my sentiments.

When professors spend class time going over readings students should have done beforehand, they are promoting an apathetic approach to learning. Not to mention, it lessens the value of our exorbitantly expensive Kenyon education. When I’m taking a class that has the potential to be every bit the engaging, challenging experience I want out of my liberal arts education — but instead, I listen to a recap of what I read the night before — it sucks.

As students, we’ve all had days where we don’t really do the reading (maybe we skim, maybe we read the introduction and conclusion, maybe we don’t even open the PDF), and we’ll all have those days again. However, I’ve noticed that across the board, not doing the reading is increasingly becoming a habit rather than a one-off. This is a problem for professors and students alike. For students, not doing our reading absolutely limits what we are able to get out of the class. Sure, we might get some overarching themes or ideas out of a class spent summarizing, but we are denying ourselves the chance to engage with those ideas, form our own opinions and, most importantly, question the content being taught to us.

For you professors, though, our lack of reading presents a much more nuanced problem. If your students are feigning illiteracy or at least aren’t deeply engaging with assigned texts, how do you handle that? Fundamentally, the job of a professor, especially at a liberal arts college like Kenyon, is to teach students about the world and how to go about thinking about it. 

So when your students aren’t doing the reading, you have a decision to make. Do you forge on, disregarding the unprepared students who are missing context? Or do you make the most out of the reality of the situation? Meet the students and class where they are, providing context, summarizing and explaining the reading that students failed to do? Lately, professors seem to be doing the latter. While commendable in spirit, this is the wrong approach to the problem. 

Something has to change. We can’t call ourselves the “writers’ college” if we’re not reading. So, professors, I’m not saying how you need to go about it — whether through reading responses, quizzes or simply in-class reading discussions — but please teach as though we’ve all done the readings. If you do, we’ll probably show up prepared and thank you for it.

Mercer Thomas ’27 is an art history and religious studies major from Reston, VA. She can be reached at thomas5@kenyon.edu.