Is your high schooler reading classic novels in school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ones we’ve heard of and read? Ones that are more than 10-20 years old?

I don’t think my all-honors senior has read more than a couple books I’ve heard of, and even those were ones she chose from a school list, not books assigned to the whole class.

Barely ! It seems that pretty much every book they read is about the story of a slave, the story of a boy during the civil rights movement, the story of a trans kid, the story of a gay kid, ...
Before everyone comes with guns blazing, I am a liberal, not MAGA, and encourage my kids to read such books but I ALSO want them to read the classics. Why can't we just have a happy medium?! Read some of these books in addition to Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, ...

This! All the book selections (and there are not many full books assigned period) are of the themes above. Add in something about recent immigrants/refugees and someone with mental illness

+1 it infuriates me. My kid can’t relate to refugees, mental illness, trans kids, or gay kids. I want good old fun classics.

Of course they can. Or they should be able to. If not relate to, then at least try to understand or empathize with. That’s one of the beautiful things about literature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ones we’ve heard of and read? Ones that are more than 10-20 years old?

I don’t think my all-honors senior has read more than a couple books I’ve heard of, and even those were ones she chose from a school list, not books assigned to the whole class.

Barely ! It seems that pretty much every book they read is about the story of a slave, the story of a boy during the civil rights movement, the story of a trans kid, the story of a gay kid, ...
Before everyone comes with guns blazing, I am a liberal, not MAGA, and encourage my kids to read such books but I ALSO want them to read the classics. Why can't we just have a happy medium?! Read some of these books in addition to Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, ...

This! All the book selections (and there are not many full books assigned period) are of the themes above. Add in something about recent immigrants/refugees and someone with mental illness

+1 it infuriates me. My kid can’t relate to refugees, mental illness, trans kids, or gay kids. I want good old fun classics.

I don’t get what you’re saying. I hope you’re not saying because she doesn’t know anyone in these situations she can’t empathize with their issues. Also if she can’t relate then maybe these books are more important for her to read than books about what was happening in England in 1861 with an orphan named Pip.

[Anonymous]

OP- what do you mean by “classic” books? Do you mean books written by white authors about white society only?

[Anonymous]

A little, but not much, even in AP lang. Waaay less than what I had to read in HS, unfortunately. Over the years, they read The Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird. A Toni Morrison book. A few more but not many whole books total, and even fewer classics. It is a depressing trend.

[Anonymous]

My freshman son read the Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, a Tale of Two Cities, and All the Creatures Great and Small, and All Quiet on the Western Front so far this year-- maybe more but they read the whole book, and he complains a lot about it.

My junior also has the same English teacher for AP lang and her class is assigned a good amount of reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP- what do you mean by “classic” books? Do you mean books written by white authors about white society only?

Yep. These classic books, meaning old, from another time, all have the same viewpoint, are all about living in a white community. This past century saw novels written by more of a variety of authors that deserve recognition.

In middle school they usually read one Steinbeck. No need to read another. Limit English authors to one Dickens or someone similar. Let Shakespeare go except a short study of his works. There are plenty of quality current novels with the same themes.

Shakespeare is unreadable for most. I know posters here see their kids as brilliant but the language used makes the reading unpleasant and so difficult that you can’t enjoy it. Some people say the themes of his plays are timeless, about love, jealousy, death, ambition, power, fate, freedom. These themes are done better in dozens of contemporary novels that are readable.

Time to move on to better quality, relevant novels for today’s society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My freshman son read the Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, a Tale of Two Cities, and All the Creatures Great and Small, and All Quiet on the Western Front so far this year-- maybe more but they read the whole book, and he complains a lot about it.

My junior also has the same English teacher for AP lang and her class is assigned a good amount of reading.

All Quiet on the Western Front is an excellent book and worthy because of its historical telling stories about WW1.

I wish they would read a book about the Vietnam War. This generation knows so little about the details of it, the brutality, the uselessness of it, the way they dropped 18 year olds into jungles with monsoons, disease, starvation and they had to fend for themselves.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes is a bestseller about a Vietnam veteran and his experiences. This could replace the love story of Romeo and Juliet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My freshman son read the Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, a Tale of Two Cities, and All the Creatures Great and Small, and All Quiet on the Western Front so far this year-- maybe more but they read the whole book, and he complains a lot about it.

My junior also has the same English teacher for AP lang and her class is assigned a good amount of reading.

All Quiet on the Western Front is an excellent book and worthy because of its historical telling stories about WW1.

I wish they would read a book about the Vietnam War. This generation knows so little about the details of it, the brutality, the uselessness of it, the way they dropped 18 year olds into jungles with monsoons, disease, starvation and they had to fend for themselves.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes is a bestseller about a Vietnam veteran and his experiences. This could replace the love story of Romeo and Juliet.

His class is also taking AP Euro this year so the school try to link what they read in English to give context to what they learn in European History.

[Anonymous]

Trying to remember what I read back in the Dark Ages...everything was either a whole book with selections from small book of poems. Most books were from The Western Canon.

7th: How Green was My Valley,

8th: Sir Gawain & Green Knight; Tale of Two Cities, Julius Caesar, O. Henry, ee cummings, Wuthering Heights, more.

9th: A Farewell to Arms, Hamlet, To Kill a Mockingbird, selected Browning poetry,

10th (English Lit): Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Milton, Dante's Inferno, ...

11th (mostly American Lit): To Kill a Mockingbird, Faulkner, Richard II (we did a Shakespeare play every year), ...

12th: Taming of the Shrew, Finnegan's Wake, selected Dylan Thomas poetry,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My freshman has read animal farm, romeo and juliet and now jurassic park. Hates them all.

Is this a joke? A typo?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My freshman son read the Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, a Tale of Two Cities, and All the Creatures Great and Small, and All Quiet on the Western Front so far this year-- maybe more but they read the whole book, and he complains a lot about it.

My junior also has the same English teacher for AP lang and her class is assigned a good amount of reading.

All Quiet on the Western Front is an excellent book and worthy because of its historical telling stories about WW1.

I wish they would read a book about the Vietnam War. This generation knows so little about the details of it, the brutality, the uselessness of it, the way they dropped 18 year olds into jungles with monsoons, disease, starvation and they had to fend for themselves.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes is a bestseller about a Vietnam veteran and his experiences. This could replace the love story of Romeo and Juliet.

Mine did. They read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They aren’t, not really. Public high school, in AP english lang. They have literally read zero full books yet. They had to pick two off a long list, not really classics. A mix. But they haven’t even had to red them yet- its March

AP Lang is intended to be focused on shorter texts with the purpose to understand the authors purpose in the writing and why they used the stylistic choices they did. Reading the classics would not be very good for this. In AP Lit a lot more classics are read. So far we have read Macbeth, Song of Solomon, Frankenstein, Madea, Oedipus Rex, and our next unit is the choice of any classic book. This is a large public highschool in dc.

They read one book in all of honors 11 English- Beowulf. Honors 9 and 10 had a couple more, but not more than 2-3 books for the whole year and not classics, except a Shakespeare play

Yes because it is meant to somewhat mimic what kids learn in AP lang. At least at my school so they are reading less classics and are focused more on short texts

I don’t get it, are you defending this poor excuse for public education?

As a public school student the education I have gotten from my english classes has been not poor at all. As a freshman we read around 2 books a term. Sophmore year we did about 1 a term but they were much longer and we learned how to write analytical essays. Junior year I took AP lang which teaches you about important things in writing such as syntax, diction, different writing styles/purposes, figuartive language, and more. This though comes at the cost of long texts because it is simply not realistic to read the classics and learn about all of the different writing components. Despite this we still managed to read four books. Now senior year in AP Lit we have read multiple classics, greek tradgedies, modern literature, and shakespeare. If you think the standard for an English class is solely reading the classics then yeah I guess it would be a poor education but the main purpose is to teach students how to read and write like a scholar. Which is what English 3 and AP Lang mainly focus on and then after you are able to do so you can then read the classics and understad and write about them in a more complex manner.

A comment defending the quality of your English education that manages to misspell five common words is either depressing or pitch perfect satire.

Lmao im a teenager formal diction and perfect spelling is not required when dicking around on DC Urban moms. Obvi i know how to spell when im writing an actual important paper or any assignment in general. But it does not invalidate my point about how English class works. Idk why adults think the classics are the ultimate measure of a good education.

There are a great many of us adults who are happy to see the emphasis of “the classics” lessened in favor of a more diverse selection of texts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My freshman has read animal farm, romeo and juliet and now jurassic park. Hates them all.

Is this a joke? A typo?

+1, I laughed out loud when I saw Jurassic Park on PP's list. It's a fun read for sure, though, but to study it in school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ones we’ve heard of and read? Ones that are more than 10-20 years old?

I don’t think my all-honors senior has read more than a couple books I’ve heard of, and even those were ones she chose from a school list, not books assigned to the whole class.

Barely ! It seems that pretty much every book they read is about the story of a slave, the story of a boy during the civil rights movement, the story of a trans kid, the story of a gay kid, ...
Before everyone comes with guns blazing, I am a liberal, not MAGA, and encourage my kids to read such books but I ALSO want them to read the classics. Why can't we just have a happy medium?! Read some of these books in addition to Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, ...

This! All the book selections (and there are not many full books assigned period) are of the themes above. Add in something about recent immigrants/refugees and someone with mental illness

+1 it infuriates me. My kid can’t relate to refugees, mental illness, trans kids, or gay kids. I want good old fun classics.

Of course they can. Or they should be able to. If not relate to, then at least try to understand or empathize with. That’s one of the beautiful things about literature.

I've glanced at some of these books (as a gay parent) and while I want to be sympathetic, they are far more political than they need to be. They will not be classics, but faddish books forgotten in a decade. I find the whole "be kind to everyone" mantra overkill these days. Of course we want to be "kind" but I'm also aware that plenty of lasting unkind things are happening because we must be kind to everyone regardless of whatever their issues are and it's often perpetuating, not helping to fix, a problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ones we’ve heard of and read? Ones that are more than 10-20 years old?

I don’t think my all-honors senior has read more than a couple books I’ve heard of, and even those were ones she chose from a school list, not books assigned to the whole class.

Barely ! It seems that pretty much every book they read is about the story of a slave, the story of a boy during the civil rights movement, the story of a trans kid, the story of a gay kid, ...
Before everyone comes with guns blazing, I am a liberal, not MAGA, and encourage my kids to read such books but I ALSO want them to read the classics. Why can't we just have a happy medium?! Read some of these books in addition to Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, ...

This! All the book selections (and there are not many full books assigned period) are of the themes above. Add in something about recent immigrants/refugees and someone with mental illness

+1 it infuriates me. My kid can’t relate to refugees, mental illness, trans kids, or gay kids. I want good old fun classics.

Of course they can. Or they should be able to. If not relate to, then at least try to understand or empathize with. That’s one of the beautiful things about literature.

I've glanced at some of these books (as a gay parent) and while I want to be sympathetic, they are far more political than they need to be. They will not be classics, but faddish books forgotten in a decade. I find the whole "be kind to everyone" mantra overkill these days. Of course we want to be "kind" but I'm also aware that plenty of lasting unkind things are happening because we must be kind to everyone regardless of whatever their issues are and it's often perpetuating, not helping to fix, a problem.

+1