Recently, Eden linked to and wrote about an article that discussed whether or not required reading (the “classics”) was a good or bad thing for high school students.
This is a subject I’ve been torn on for quite some time. In my high school, we didn’t do a great deal of required reading…at least not the required reading of novels that most high school students do. We mostly stuck to our literature books. Short stories. Poetry. Drama. I liked it. I can’t say I loved everything we read, but for the most part, I loved reading. I loved writing. It wasn’t difficult to get me to enjoy something.
But I know that I was more the exception than the rule. I never had to be told to read a book. I devoured them. But I know that a lot of what I read as a teenager wasn’t exactly classic literature. I realize now that even I, an avid reader and enthusiastic student of English, wasn’t necessarily ready for a lot of classic literature.
I’ve come to read many things as an adult that my peers read in high school, and I wonder how my experience would have been different then.
I’m not sure if there’s a right answer or not…but I do know that many, many kids are turned off by what they read in high school. So what is my job? Is it to expose students to a list of required titles, or is it to get them to enjoy reading enough to want to continue reading long after they’ve left my class? My guess that it’s probably somewhere in the middle.
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