Magazines as FYC texts?

In a casual discussion about choosing texts for FYC, one of my colleagues mentioned an exciting semester he'd had using Harper's. (The bookstore put in an order for 3-4 months worth, and each month students went in to pick up their copy. The only challenge he mentioned was having to read through each issue quickly himself,in order to direct flow of course, design assignments, etc.) I'm intrigued by the idea, but a little worried about reading level. Has anyone tried such an experiment (or perhaps is that yr usual method of operations)? What magazine did you use? I'd love to hear any reports of rewards and/or difficulties or general speculations about how you think such an approach might work.

Comments

[Billie]

I used Newsweek one semester with a group of underprepared students. The articles were easy enough to read, they were current, and they were terrific starting places for longer essays. Students could then have some directed research projects that were interesting to them . . . and the projects didn't "feel" like typical research projects. I'd do it again.

[deb]

Years ago, I taught with a range of magazines--National Review on one end of the political spectrum, Mother Jones on the other (and Time, Newsweek, Utne Reader, and others in between). Students signed up to buy just one magazine, and then we spent time in class looking at all of them, examining how current events and controversies were presented differently (or not) in each magazine. Eventually, like Billie's students, mine also used the magazine topics as jumping-off points for other research.

[joanna]

I'm intrigued by the idea. I know that some of our reading and ESL faculty have the students subscribe to magazines, but I've never tried it myself. Newsweek, I think, also offers some sort of teaching support, too.

[Holly]

Yeah, Newsweek was the one that came to my mind; when I mentioned it to my colleague, he said he didn't consider Newsweek "college-level" reading. I'm not quite sure what my rxn to that comment is, but I have increasingly been realizing how poor my students' reading skills are.

On another note, I had a brief fantasy yesterday of a group of colleagues across institutions, all using something like Harper's (or Newsweek), pooling assignments in some electronic forum and encouraging communication (blogging?) among students from different geographic areas/backgrounds.

[macncheese]

The college I'm now teaching for is starting to use the New York Times for various comp classes. Because I already use it in my second-level comp courses in various ways, I think I'm going to try it out next semester when I'm a little more adjusted.

[Shanon Lawson]

Since we all have to use the same textbooks at our school (and rumor has it that we might have to go to a statewide textbook), some of us have been teaching bookless classes in our second-semester comp to provide some flexibility. Also, since I focus so much on research, I feel like I don't use enough essays to justify the $70(!!) price tag for my students.

I've been using scholarly edited public domain works that I can find on the web along with articles from the New Yorker, Harper's, and the Atlantic Monthly. My students can access all of these through EBSCO's Academic Search Premiere database (although the Atlantic just pulled its post 2004 full text out).

In addition, some writers like Malcolm Gladwell have retained copyright over their works, and I have students download the PDFs from his website (I always have students use PDF files whenever possible - it's much easier to refer to page rather than paragraph numbers). And the authors of Freakonomics - an approachable book on economics, good for cause/effect discussions - post several of their short articles on their website, along with the primary sources they synthesized.

[Maureen Costello]

I'm delighted by this discussion. As director of the Newsweek Education Program I can tell you that many of your colleagues across the nation have used the magazine successfully with all sorts of students. Underprepared readers and writers are challenged by the reading level but engaged by the content that covers both pop culture and politics. More advanced students use it as a springboard. And, yes, we do offer considerable teacher support. Take a look at our Web site, www.newsweekeducation.com