A new semester has started, and I am back in the saddle at the two community colleges where I try to teach English to a youthful population that, every succeeding year, seems to care less and less about reading and writing skills. But is it the fault of the students that they are insufficiently enthusiastic about the finer points of prosody and syntax? I wonder.

The other day, my charges and I were discussing a book in which the author mentions Ernest Hemingway, arguably the greatest writer of the twentieth century. In my two sections of Writing Development, comprised of approximately fifty students, only one — yes, just a single individual — had even heard of Hemingway.

“He’s a writer, right?” the kid said. Kudos to him, though, because he also knew the title of one of the great man’s books, In Our Time.

What is going on in the middle schools and the high schools of our nation if supposedly inquiring young minds are not even exposed to one of the greatest writers in American history, a man who has written with amazing aplomb about many of the landmark events of the twentieth century, a man who won the Nobel Prize, a man who … well, a man who is Ernest Hemingway!?

How can we expect students in community college — or any college, for that matter — to appreciate the qualities and the joys of great writing when they haven’t been given a taste for it when they were younger and more impressionable in the lower grades?

When did reading the great books go out of style in the classrooms of the USA? I know I keep asking these questions, but frankly I don’t know what else to do.