Students Need Great Books, Not Trendy Reading Lists

A reading list that mistakes recency for significance does not adequately prepare students for college.

Responding to: Essential Books To Read Before College by Sonya Matejko; Published in The ReadDown by Penguin Random House

The core disagreement: Matejko’s recommended book list focuses on contemporary, and likely fleeting, leftist preoccupations rather than timeless truths. Students should read Great Books instead of recent bestsellers.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT

In her introduction, Matejko encourages students to read widely, “consider broad perspectives,” and to treat her recommended books as “conversation starters” rather than definitive answers. This is sound advice, reflecting an admirable openness to inquiry. College is a rare season in life when students have both the time and the supportive environment to immerse themselves in serious reading. Matejko’s general advice acknowledges this ideal.

WHERE THEY GO WRONG

Instead of focusing on “the best that has been thought and said,” Matejko’s list of recommended books is almost exclusively contemporary and ideological. She fails to follow through on her own advice about reading broadly. For example, the first book on the list is How to Be a (Young) Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone. The book, published in 2023, is one of several on this list that focus on the modern preoccupation of structural racism in America. Others include Dear Martin (also by Nic Stone) and The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones. All three were written within the last ten years. The same pattern emerges in the books included about modern feminism.

Photo by: Egor Gordeev (Unsplash)

C.S. Lewis addressed the downsides of this approach in his introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. He notes, first, that “A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of … thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light.” Lewis also reminds readers that “Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes.” Students in particular must heed this advice, since they are not yet experts in the subjects they are encountering. They are fish who don’t realize that they’re wet.

THE REAL STORY

Lewis provides a solution to the problem he propounds. “We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.” He continues, “the only palliative,” to the dogmas and blindnesses of our own age, “is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.” Lewis recommends that students read one old book after each new one. In other words, students should read Great Books—the foundational works of literature, philosophy, history, and science that have shaped civilization and continue to illuminate enduring questions about truth, virtue, beauty, and the human condition. These books have endured across generations, slowly building a “Great Conversation” among the most influential ideas of every era.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Students should seek the “clean sea breeze of the centuries” as an antidote to modern dogma. The books they read shape their understanding and opinions of themselves, their country, and the wider world. Reading only from narrow, contemporary works risks leaving them with a distorted understanding of their own civilization and its achievements. Students may come away fluent in critique but unfamiliar with the intellectual inheritance they are critiquing, including its arguments, aspirations, and internal debates. Without that grounding, students’ judgment becomes shallow and historically untethered. And a civilization cannot survive if its heirs never learn what made it.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Students preparing for college should read books that have stood the test of time, not merely those that reflect the passing concerns of the present moment. Great Books connect students to the long conversation of civilization and sharpen their judgment. If students want to understand the world they are entering, they should begin with the books that helped build it.

Jenna A. Robinson, Senior Editor of Education at Restoring the West, is president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Follow her on X @jarobinson1.