By now, most high school grads know where they will be going to college and will be getting a communication from the school about their summer reading assignment (a.k.a. their “beach book”). In today’s Pope Center article, David Randall of the National Association of Scholars takes a look at some of this year’s picks, focusing on North Carolina.

He has to report that the selections are, as usual, pretty bad. School officials almost always choose some easy-to-read book (a “graphic novel” has been chosen at some institutions), commonly a memoir of some sort, that conveys a leftist message. If the students bother reading the book and thinking about it (which is doubtful, since most of them know that this is not much of an “assignment”), they will get reinforcement for some statist notion.

It’s a wasted opportunity, Randall argues. Colleges could and should use their summer reading assignment to get students thinking that they will be expected to do serious reading and thinking. He mentions that NAS has a list of 80 books it recommends as appropriate choices for “the beach book.” Among his suggestions is Voltaire’s Candide, which could get students to contemplate the trouble that can come from utopian thinking. Now there’s a really radical idea for young Americans to think about!