English class has always been a favorite class of mine and I’ve always loved reading. I’m the kind of person who can fly through book after book. I’m also the kind of person who enjoys required reading, possibly an unpopular opinion for people my age but the Picture of Dorian Gray goes hard, and I reread 1984 at least 2x a year. So, on the one hand, I understand why some English teachers complain about bored, uninterested students, but on the other hand, give us a protagonist we can relate to! Schools should give more modern, diverse literature as required reading because it will engage students more and allow them to see stories told by people who are both alike and different from them.
In an article for BookRiot, teacher and writer Carolina Ciucci explains that more modern literature often explores more recent pressing issues such as climate change, social justice, AI, and social media, this not only provides important and relevant lessons for students but also makes the reading feel more important to them personally and, therefore, they are more likely to pay attention. Not only would modern literature help students engage with real-world issues, but expanding genre variety would also allow them to discover what types of books they truly enjoy. I don’t want to remove all classics from required reading, but why not add even a couple of books written this decade? And while we’re at it, why are we so afraid to allow for a variety of genres in HS English? Sure, kids are free to read whatever they want from the library but could you imagine how many more kids would enjoy reading if we required them to read from a variety of genres and eras, allowing them the opportunity to discover what books appeal to them! What I mean is that teachers seem so oddly hesitant to bring modern fantasy and sci-fi and romance and YA into required reading. So many teenagers develop a distaste for reading because English class makes them feel as though all reading will be a similar experience to reading Shakespeare and maybe they don’t like to read Shakespeare.
In an article for the journal Campanile, student and writer Alyssa Leone makes another notable observation: the majority of current required reading books were “all written by white, male authors, involve almost exclusively white characters and were published over 50 years ago” This is an important distinction. In a diverse world —TCHS, for example, is 66% non-white or Hispanic— shouldn’t we be reading a diverse range of stories? And yes, of course, you may point out that some required reading lists do acknowledge non-white stories, like To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most common required reading texts, and yet isn’t it extremely telling that one of the only books in required reading that is focused on a black story was written by a white author? And this isn’t a benign violation, if the only non-white texts present in a classroom are written by white authors this not only sends the message to students of color that their ability to tell their own stories has less value, but it also opens the door for inaccuracy and incidental racism. To hark back to To Kill a Mockingbird, it is a poignant book that works as a solid stepping stone for many students, but the fact that the book was written by a white author is certainly not lost on the reading experience, as Tanya Landman, writer for The Guardian, points out
“Harper Lee’s focus is purely white … The book’s central theme is that you need to walk around in someone else’s skin to understand them and Harper Lee doesn’t actually get under the skin of any of the black characters … Calpurnia is in the fictional tradition of the “happy black”, the contented slave – the descendent of the ever-loyal Mammy in Gone With the Wind. And the rest of the black community is depicted as a group of simple, respectful folk – passive and helpless and all touchingly grateful to Atticus Finch – the white saviour. We never see any of them angry or upset. We never see the effect of Tom Robinson’s death on his family up close – we don’t witness Helen, Tom’s wife, grieving and Scout never wonders about his children. Their distress is kept at a safe distance from the reader.”
This characterization and storytelling in a required reading text can fundamentally change both how students view racism and themselves as a part of it. So why don’t we promote more books written by minority authors telling their own stories? Why are we so afraid of altering required reading lists?
Furthermore, To Kill a Mockingbird is often one of the only non-white stories on required reading lists —unless we go as far as to include The Boy in The Striped Pajamas which is, also, notably historically inaccurate— and many required reading lists completely neglect to include any Hispanic stories or Asian stories or queer stories or stories from other minorities. This is not because these stories do not exist or because they are any less beautiful than stories written by white authors or straight authors, it is because these stories are often new and experimental and some educators are scared of new and experimental. Some may say that if these stories exist then why can’t students just read them on their own time beyond class, and the answer is that so many students are hardly aware that these stories are out there, or, perhaps they have just developed a general distaste for reading because of English classes which require them to only read books that they can’t relate to.
Now, it’s worth acknowledging arguments to the counter: classics are the foundations of contemporary literature, classics are an important part of history, modern literature lacks sophistication— and while I would concede that classics are an important foundation but, by that logic, how far back should we go? If we are to treat Shakespeare as the foundation for modern storytelling, then what was his foundation? Perhaps we should then require students to read the Epic of Gilgamesh. But then what came before that? Although, I suppose, the best counterpoint I can provide is simply to remind you that the contemporary literature of today, is the foundation of books tomorrow; someday, books written in 2025 will, too, be classics. And they will someday, too, be studied as we now study the ancient texts of today. Believe it or not, seniority does not always imply superiority, we have developed this idea that people of today are so much less intelligent and sophisticated than they were in times past and yet, Greek play-write, Aristophanes often told stories centered around bodily functions, innuendo, and plain vulgarity; just as well, there are plenty of writers today that ponder complexities of society and the meaning of existence. So, to reiterate: age does not determine value. A book’s worth should not be measured by how long ago it was written, but by the impact it has on its readers, both now and in the future.
To conclude, both students and teachers would greatly benefit from modernized, diversified required readings. Students would be able to discover genres that they enjoy with protagonists that they can relate to, written by people like them and people different from them; teachers would find that more students would be happy to participate in assignments about stories and characters that they relate to. And lastly, I would go as far as to say that society as a whole would improve, because when students are required to read a more diverse range of books they will develop a deeper level of empathy, and with a variety of genres as required reading, they will be more likely to discover that they like to read in their free time as well and I truly believe that a well-read society is an improved society.
