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.

Tuition “surcharges,” cost-cutting measures, and student-prof ratios are all on the rise. Please see the attached CNNmoney.com article about the trend and make sure you’re keeping an eye on the price tags of the state schools you’re considering.

I’ve been giving a good deal of thought to the idea that’s been swirling around about Obama’s new role as archetypal American Dream success story—namely that he’s an inspiration and example to us all of what hard work, ethics, and some fantastic PR can do for a person. He’s the bootstrap president, or at least a bootstrap president.

Politics aside, I’m interested to see what sort of effect a President who is the product of pure hard work (ok, and more than a modicum of sheer giftedness) has on the educational expectations in our country. In other words, now that the U.S. is led by someone who made it to the top on merit, against all odds, will we feel a palpable trickle down effect on the aggregate American expectation of achievement, not only for us, but also for our children? Will it become cool to be an overachiever? Will it no longer be considered gauche to “try too hard”?

As much as we collectively triumph in a good old fashioned success story, individually we have been folks who strive merely to get by or get out, to work as little as possible, to keep up a façade of wealth that is not reflected in our bank accounts. We think we thrive on convenience and entertainment. We neglect education as a chief tenet of political campaigning, in effect, neglecting ourselves and showing our true colors as folks whose priorities have led us to such a historically precarious moment. In fact, during the 2008 election we turned elitism into a negative attribute, thereby throwing out regard for all that is elite with it. And while we have entertained ourselves into oblivion, the rest of the world has not stopped working, has not stopped striving, and suddenly the global community has grown much smaller and intimate.

Bailouts, taxes, left-wing and right-wing rhetoric aside, I hope that if anything is “redistributed” during this new administration, it is a new affirmation for the personal pride, hard work, educational merit, and continual striving and sacrifice on which our country is founded and to which we must surely return.