Readings, Rated
High School Reading Lists, Redux
On The Wire, cop-turned-math teacher Mr. Pryzbylewski schools his inner-city Baltimore students about probability by letting them play dice—like the kids do on the streets. Smart teachers are always devising ways to keep lessons interactive, or more cynically, trick students into learning. But sometimes the trick is as simple as giving them fresh materials. That’s the idea behind updating high school reading lists, a welcome trend in school districts around Chicagoland: Contemporary novels like The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson are joining the old heavyweights. Educators are “choosing more works where the protagonist resembles the student,” and in one Naperville program elementary school students even get to be proto-editors (or, again more cynically, market research participants): they read and respond to unpublished manuscripts supplied by HarperCollins.
And good thing, with young people (nay, everyone) reading less and less. Whatever works, get ‘em to read. But what the Trib piece doesn’t acknowledge is that this practice really isn’t new. The House on Mango Street and Stop Time, among other contemporary titles, made it into the curriculum in my high school, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Middlesex or Housekeeping on the lists these days. Somewhere out there, I’m willing to bet, there’s a senior seminar on graphic novels where they’re poring over Maus and Persepolis. And all of this makes me very happy. There are classics that should never get elbowed out, but curriculums should always resist calcification. And when the objective is, in large part, getting kids to learn how to read and analyze texts, not just feeding them their recommended allowance of the canon, a text written last year is no less worthy a tool than one written in the 19th century.
What contemporary books did you read in high school? Or, teachers: Which ones do you use in your classes now?
I thought “The Things They Carried” was a wonderful book. I’m not an excessive reader (that is to say, I only read if a book has been highly reviewed). My boss actually recommended Tim O’Brien’s book for me to read, and I was more than pleased. It is a wonderfully told story.
I found another post about the book that I thought I’d share…Cheers!
http://www.petermanseye.com/anthologies/perseverance/343-the-things-they-carried
Absolutely. I can tell you as a High School teacher based in Chicago that, in fact, that Maus and Persepolis are standard fair in many Junior High and High School classes these days.
I can also stipulate that I was fortunate in my English curriculum in that I was in charge of creating it.
So,here are a few others that I have used in the class, non-fiction included: Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World by Eduardo Galeano, Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros, selected pieces from Roberto Bolano’s The Last Evenings on Earth.
By the way teachers, each year my students in Humboldt Park fall in love with the short story One Holy Night by Sandra Cisneros.
It’s one the biggest shams in English education that we reserve the great and wonderful mess of contemporary literature only for college and beyond; instead, by choosing “safe” novels and by relying only on “proven” traditional novels for High School curriculum we undermine the art and significance of literature (which, yes, is often a response of the times), as well as ill-prepare our students to be contemporary, constant, and engaged readers.
Yes, literature is a messy, awkward, violent, sexy, weird thing. Hiding this from students only damages their appreciation of reading.
Mike
I remember reading Great Expectations (loved it), The Outsiders, and Pigman. Pretty sure we read Romeo & Juliet and Catcher in the Rye. I currently teach a College-level intro to lit course and am teaching the novels On the Road and Sula, plus a number of short stories and novel excerpts, including excerpts from Anna Karenina, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Great Gatsby, as well as ork by Tim O’Brien, ZZ Packer, Edward P. Jones, James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Willa Cather, James Joyce, Joyce Carol Oates, Louise Erdrich, Isaac Babel, Chekhov, and many more.
Thanks for your comments, Kathie and Mike! Sorry for the delay in posting them: We had some technical issues. Your lists of works you teach makes me wish we could sit down and talk classes, reading lists, assignments. Keep on keepin’ on.
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I Kat!
Простенько, но я все понял. Благодарю за подробное разъяснение