Required reading

A front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal recently read, "Books in English Class Shift Little in Decades." In other words, high school students today are mostly reading the same assigned books that their parents read.

I find this surprising. I had assumed that with feminism and wokeness dominating schools of education in recent years that high school English curriculums would now be mostly books written by women, people of color and homosexuals. Yet the article says, "All of the authors of the top 10 books are white, eight men and two women."

This probably has much to do with English teachers, administrators and school board members favoring the books they themselves read in high school. Sticking with the tried and true is usually easier and safer.

Literature favored in many high schools often includes The Great Gatsby, The Crucible, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and Hamlet.

The article concludes with a comment by an Illinois teacher, "I more than anything want to create a lifelong reader."

I think that should be the goal of all English teachers. Unfortunately much required reading may accomplish just the opposite. How many students forced to read Hamlet will then volunteer to read Macbeth? Probably not many. They might even avoid Shakespeare for the rest of their lives.  To Kill a Mockingbird might have a better success rate.

The ideal assigned reading for high school students should possess the following qualities:

1. It should be relatively short. Short books like Of Mice and Men are less intimidating. Students are constantly distracted by friends, activities, video games and social media. Short books are more likely to be actually read in full.

2. It should be meaningful. That is, it must bring out issues that stimulate the mind and make students want to talk about them in class.  It need not be a book about a contemporary teenager, but that might help.

3. It should be wholesome. I am talking about today's standards, not those of 50 years ago. Even so, there must be standards. Why invite controversy from parents?  A novel does not need graphic sex and four-letter words to be profound and engaging.

4. It should be interesting, even exciting. People read books because they enjoy them. When assigned a book that makes a reader want to keep turning the pages to discover what happens next, a student will be more likely to finish reading that book and perhaps even want to find another book just like it.

In that case, mission accomplished.