Let's Update American High School Reading

[Anonymous No.5123912]

I know most of you cunts are in high school and thats why you ramble on about shit novels like 1984, but for those with expanded horizons, lets describe how we would change the novels typically required to be ready in American primary eduaction. Kids are smarter these days and we don't need to stand by mediocre books that aren't relevant today.

There are what are read now:

To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Catcher in the Rye
Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
1984
Brave New World
Animal Farm
Farenheit 451
Clockwork Orange
Of Mice and Men
Great Gatsby
The Old Man and the Sea

I'd replace To Kill A Mockingbird with A Light In August. I think we can move past the dichotomous 2D "white people are evil, blacks are innocent, racism is bad yo" bullshit into a more nuanced discussion of race. It would also introduce student's to Faulkner, an author that deserve to be read more.

I'd also drop one of the many dystopia novels that are shoved down kids' throats. Seriously, the cold war is over, and alot of those books aren't that good.

Personally I'd really like to see The Last Picture Show read in schools, it might be a tough sell because of the sex but I think it portrays a poignant picture of growing up in America, and not just small towns. The relationships are also very nuanced and I think high schoolers would get alot from it.

[Anonymous No.5123922]

>>5123912
let me tell you which of those i read for my high school.

>none of them

literally 0. and i've only actually read a couple titles on that list anyway. started grapes of wrath and put it down (too young probably, too FPS-conditioned, halo-addicted), and besides that i read all of 1984 and even fapped to it and loved it.

[Anonymous No.5123924]

Fingens Weka

[Anonymous No.5124230]

>>5123912
>Clockwork Orange
Go shitpost somewhere else

[Anonymous No.5124252]

i read to kill a mockingbird, beowulf, lord of the flies, grapes of wrath, shakespeare

well, that's the mandatory texts i can remember

every subject in school made me hate it, and it took a long time to begin liking literature and mathenatics

[Anonymous No.5124274]

I would keep Old man and the sea, catcher in the rye, great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, the things they carried, death of a salesman, and your pick of obligatory Shakespeare. I think the man who was Thursday would be a fun read and rewarding for junior-level history buffs, but it doesn't quite fit into any curriculumn

[Anonymous No.5124286]

I always enjoyed reading from the moment I was able, but I firmly believe highschool kills literature for the common pleb. English teachers seem aware that they assign shitty, boring books too. I remember one year the teacher saying "the boys" should enjoy some vietnam novel called Fallen Angels. It sucked. I would read my own books in class instead. I think I probably sparknotes'd almost every book except for To Kill a Mockingbird and I also unfortunately read the shithead that is Digital Fortress. I would definitely say Vonnegut should be a requirement across the board. I personally dislike him but I didn't encounter him until my 20's. I think he would be a great author for young potential readers to see that "books can be fun xD"

[Anonymous No.5124294]

Opinions on the sorrows of young weather, kafka on the shore, and ubik in a curriculum?

[Anonymous No.5124309]

>>5124252
how can I learn to like math? school made me hate it and i was shit at it

[Anonymous No.5124339]

>>5124252
True, especially for classes where you read literature. I remember reading Kafka in school and not liking it a bit, and now he’s one of my favorite authors. Only actually years later I discovered what interesting authors we read, and subsequently re-read their books, which I then liked.

What sparked your liking of mathematics? I always liked it so-so – and now I’m about to write my master’s thesis in mathematics… It gets much better after school.

[Anonymous No.5124366]

replace 1984 with Yurope, its american equivalent

[Anonymous No.5124368]

britfag here, here's what i studied for GCSE and A level for your hypothetical mild interest
1984
Silas Marner
Dorian Grey
Mrs Dalloway
King Lear
Yeats+Browning

[Anonymous No.5124382]

>>5123912
>Kids are smarter these days

[Anonymous No.5124410]

>>5123912
Honestly, the best thing to do would be to come up with lists of novels that have something in common, then allow the students to choose one to read and then write an essay about it. Of course, this would require the teachers to be well read and know all of the potential novels, but overall, I think this would be the best way to teach literature in HS English class.

[Anonymous No.5124431]

Frenchfrog here. I don't think many author are compulsory in my country, but you've get to expose the student to a number of works. The teacher generally chose them among the most important plus a few less-known titles that fit the year's theme (because there's a theme every year).

[Anonymous No.5124436]

>>5123912
>Kids are smarter these days
>mediocre books that aren't relevant today
god dammit I want to comment on your thread why would you introduce the subject in such a seemingly troll way

Anyway OP, your list certainly isn't the same as every high school. Your analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird is frighteningly limited. That being said, I would support swapping it out for Light in August, but if a high school is doing Faulkner I think it would be more productive to teach Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!

I'm amazed your high school read A Clockwork Orange. That seems like a surprising choice. Anyway, most of the other books on that list deserve to be there, minus Animal Farm and possibly Frankenstein. Instead of seeing a current list, I think it would be more interesting to design an entire list you would like to see. Or how about 5 books that you think would be a good idea to assign to high school seniors, given most aren't interested in literature, many won't read them, etc.


I think I'd give them All the Pretty Horses, Othello, Sound and the Fury, The Stranger, and Things They Carried.
If it is unclear, I went to an all male high school and would probably change my list if designing it for a co-ed school because gender does matter and I don't want to discuss All the Pretty Horses with a girl

[Anonymous No.5124441]

>>5124339
Not >>5124252 but during primary and high school i couldn't stand maths because where I live they teach it 'pragmatically', so the youngins arent learning 2x2 but 2 cows x 2 cows which is completely ridiculous.

but after high school i began to think about it more and more and now I'm taking private classes and I love it. You really need to visualize it as the basis to all rational/objective knowledge and an amazing tool to sharpen your analytical skills. There's also an aesthetic side to it if that's something you can appreciate, because even though the meaning we attribute to the symbols have an objective nature, the symbols themselves are completely arbitrary.

if you want a better answer though i would recommend reaching /sci/ or something

[Anonymous No.5124443]

I'm skeptical of assigned reading now that kids have access to literally any book that catches their fancy.

Why not force kids to read, but not WHAT to read? Make them write tons about what they think about what they're reading (which hopefully is interesting to them, considering that they chose it).

But here's my go at it, chronologically backwards (as all research should go, going from accessible to remote)

>Freshmen (Post-modern)
Watchmen
The Things They Carried
Slaughterhouse 5
The Man in the High Castle
>Sophomore
Howl
Invisible Man
The Day of the Locust
A Farewell to Arms
>Junior
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
Light in August
Our Town
Huckleberry Finn
>Senior
At the Mountains of Madness
Billy Budd
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
The Turn of the Screw

This could be way more intricate, but I've wasted time enough, tear it apart boys

[Anonymous No.5124450]

oops, this
>>5124441
was meant for
>>5124309

[Anonymous No.5124469]

>>5124443
>Why not force kids to read, but not WHAT to read? Make them write tons about what they think about what they're reading (which hopefully is interesting to them, considering that they chose it).

Well, probably the majority of all kids don't give a shit about reading at all, so they'll choose things purely on the basis of easiness and totally dog any assignments. And then from the remaining 4/10s you would get a million essays about Twiight (or equivalent).

[Anonymous No.5124470]

I remember reading The Outsiders in grade 8. Yikes.

[Anonymous No.5124474]

>>5124431
Is reading Proust compulsory in French schools? I sometimes hear that at least the first part of the first book, “Swann’s way”, is standard…

[Anonymous No.5124476]

>>5124469
Force them to write about it, over and over, pages.

If you have some smartass pick up a Doctor Seuss book, tell him that he'd better know the fuck out of its metrical qualities, rhetoric, etc etc.

Praxis is learning, not its imitation.

[Anonymous No.5124480]

>>5123912
>A Light in August

[Anonymous No.5124484]

>>5124443
To answer your question simply, kids will most likely choose shit books. Which is fine with me, reading is not really nor has ever been a mass cultural hobby. But high school literature is meant to get a few kids into the conversation and ensure that at least everyone is familiar with some of the classics that they will probably see referenced all around them. Books chosen by teaches will be more likely to raise issues pertinent to the kid's life and thoughts and force them to introspection (hypothetically). A bunch of kids reading all the time, well I could only imagine will turn into a bunch of kids reading Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, etc.

That being said, I like your book list. Senior year I would tweak (because I literally haven't read anything on that list), and also I'd expect kids to read at least 5-6 books a year, not just five. But solid start.

[Anonymous No.5124488]

>>5123912
>daily reminder that To Kill A Mockingbird is on the official /lit/ newbie list of things to read
Why aren't you rioting outside moot's house to get this changed?

[Anonymous No.5124493]

>>5124474
IIRC the "Un Amour de Swann" section is frequently assigned.

>>5124476
Ah... well in that case I think that system would work, it's just impractical in the sense that it would require forcing kids to actually do the work and understand the thing. And our inability to do that is more or less why our current system doesn't work. So it has the same problem as our present system really. I suppose it would engage a slightly higher percentage of the students.

>>5124484
This is also a good point.

[Anonymous No.5124501]

>>5124436
>but if a high school is doing Faulkner I think it would be more productive to teach Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!
Lol. Half of high school teachers probably can't get through either of those.

Light in August is a good choice, but I think As I Lay Dying is better. With AILD you get a shorter book (meaning some kids might actually read it) and an intro to modernist texts where the focus is on the prose itself.

[Anonymous No.5124520]

The public high school system must always teach easy to understand novels, as it was contrived to teach the student of average or below average intelligence. Today's students cannot understand or have difficulty understanding anything unfamiliar to them, id est, older literature.

[Anonymous No.5124532]

>>5124484
Their products are more important than the components. You can write a great essay about anything if you have the right eye.

[Anonymous No.5124544]

>>5124474
It's nowhere near compulsory, but not uncommon to have it assigned in sophomore class. My Latin teacher in highschool apparently believed it was undecent for French highschoolers to finish their three years without having read some Proust, but he was a Proust hard-liner himself so...

Of course it takes some balls assigning something like that (depending on the class) and you'll always get the complainings about the book being muh complicated. But the kids into literature (and there are more you would suspect) generally enjoy. I think we tend to underestimate teenagers, a 17 years old is not that much being an adult in terms of dedication/brainpower/intellectual agility.

I myself never had to read him.

[Anonymous No.5124546]

>>5124520
They've also been in such heavy rotation that they don't even feel like real books anymore.

They're all... tainted...

The worst thing that ever happened to Salinger was having Catcher forced on the unwilling, when it was always supposed to be a book that one would FIND outside of that.

It's the most ironic addition to the High School canon.

[Anonymous No.5124554]

>>5124366
oh my god

[Anonymous No.5124562]

>>5123912
>To Kill a Mockingbird
Replace with Invisible Man
>Lord of the Flies
>Catcher in the Rye
Keep all of these
>Grapes of Wrath
Nigga what school did you go to, I'm jealous
>Frankenstein
I found this overrated but that's just me
>1984
>Brave New World
>Animal Farm
Replace Animal Farm with Darkness At Noon
>Farenheit 451
>Clockwork Orange
Do we really need this many dystopia stories?
>Of Mice and Men
>Great Gatsby
>The Old Man and the Sea
Keep em

Add The Republic and Blood Meridian

[Anonymous No.5124571]

>>5124562
I agree with most of this. Definitely does not need to be that much Dystopia. Blood Meridian would be a good intro to some tougher modern lit, I'd also suggest adding in The Crying of Lot 49. Definitely short enough for people to finish it.

[Anonymous No.5124588]

In my junior and senior years, we read only Frankenstein off that miserable list. Additionally, we also read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Kafka's stories, the poetry of Neruda and William Carlos Williams, As I Lay Dying, Running in the Family, The Tempest, and City of Glass.

[Anonymous No.5124614]

>>5124488
OP here.
The /lit/ newbie list is almost entirely those high school novels I listed. I figure this is because most of /lit/ actually is in high school or fresh out. I wasn't joking when I said
>I know most of you cunts are in high school and thats why you ramble on about shit novels like 1984.
I base this on all the "post your age/occupation/favorite book" threads I see on here; go check out one and you'll see the majority of the answers are "teenager/NEET or student/high school book". I don't come to /lit/ to talk to these people although I'm sure some of them are relatively well-read and do contribute to more mature discussions on here.

[Anonymous No.5124628]

>>5124339
>>5124309
i got a head injury from a bad fall while fixing aircraft in the military, afterwards i started appreciating patterns and geometry, after i served my term i started to formally begin studies, but i think the head injury was just coincidental, because i started appreciating literature shortly before it

i now really wish, instead of forcing skills onto children during their school, that they would make children understand, appreciate, and somehow embrace all the fields, or at least some of the ones they are taught. i'm not sure what could have been done to forge a passion for math or literature, but what happened in school didn't cut it, homeschooling would have probably been the best option

[Anonymous No.5124650]

>>5124571
>>5124562

If you think a book like Blood Meridian would be a good book to teach in high school, you don't know the first thing about high school. People are still trying to ban Invisible Man and The Bluest Eye, and they would have a field day with Blood Meridian.

[Anonymous No.5124675]

>>5124501
This is the most difficult aspect of planning for high school students in my opinion. I think you're right, more people would get a good deal out of As I Lay Dying, and its current place as the Faulkner of choice in high schools is deserved. The tension exists because I think SatF and A,A! are both better, more enduring, and more thought provoking books than LiA and AILD. Chances are, these kids are only going to read one Faulkner book in their lives, why not give them the best, even if it may be a challenge they aren't ready for?

However this logic may be the backwards though process that makes so many high schoolers dislike reading anyway. I don't know, I'd be happy giving them any Faulkner. I debate both sides of this question often.

>>5124532
Literature class should not be essay class, any more than science class should be lab class. Of course essays, like labs, are a vital practice for someone continuing in a branch of study, but I think high school classes serve an important purpose in exposing children to established knowledge and classic works. Literature class can and should do more than teach kids how to write.

>>5124520
This is fucking ridiculous, and I can't possibly think what it is based on. Fucking everything today's students are learning was unfamiliar to them at some point, and tons of public schools teach classics.

>>5124562
Blood Meridian without any Faulkner? Naw, dawg. And leave the Republic for students interested in philosophy. (con't)

[Anonymous No.5124686]

>>5124675
(con't)
>>5124562
For high school start them with The Apology or the Symposium, if you are so driven to give them Plato. Also, All the Pretty Horses may be better than BM
>>5124588
Solid reading list

>>5124614
Your sample size is biased. I think average age here is almost finished with university. The /lit/ newbie list compiles books that most people have read in high school so everyone can join in the conversation. They are just books that are pretty much a given for certain generations to read. That certainly doesn't make the list better, but may help explain its current form.

[Anonymous No.5124725]

If I taught high school I think I'd probably like to have my students read some of the following:

Ada or Ardor
Book of the New Sun
Heart of Darkness
Metamorphosis
some shorter stuff from Borges and essays from DFW

[Anonymous No.5124743]

>>5124650
>>5124675
Here's what you guys are forgetting: high schools need books that serve a dual purpose of literature AND history/social studies. They can only have so many books that the students will read and they need to make the most of them. Thats why they read TKAMB (civil rights) 1984/farenheit 451/etc. (dystopia/totalitarianism/communism), Grapes of Wrath (hx of socialism, great depression), Great Gatsby (gilded age, industrialization, prohibition).

You might have an excellent plan to introduce kids to modernist literature but you forget that is not important at a high school level.

This is why I think A Light In August to be a far better choice that SatF or AILD. This is why despite the fact that Cormac is my single favorite author I don't see the point in assigning him in H.S.

[Anonymous No.5124784]

>>5123912
>I think we can move past the dichotomous 2D "white people are evil, blacks are innocent, racism is bad yo"

Have you even read the book? Atticus Finch is a white guy and absolutely the hero of the novel.

[Anonymous No.5124812]

>>5124725
>Ada
>Book of the New Sun
>Kafka
>Borges

That's some good shit, probably too good

[Anonymous No.5124828]

>>5124725
Ada's too long for a high school curriculum. Lolita works just fine.

[Anonymous No.5124844]

>>5124230
It was optional for me.
So kids do read it.

[Anonymous No.5124847]

>>5124743
I really disagree with the idea of choosing high school books for these "dual purposes". History can be taught in the history classroom! These motives are transparently obvious to even the dullest student and they sort of cheapen the experience in some difficult-to-communicate way, perhaps in part because it's clear that the books are not being chosen entirely "for their own sake" or "for the enjoyment of reading them" anymore.

[Anonymous No.5124851]

>>5124675
I don't think you ever went to an average or even below average public school. Most public school kids are going to get to the "my mother is a fish" line and laugh their asses off. They won't pick up the book again. What you are trying to do is assume everyone has the same level, or at least a comparable level, of interest in literature as you. They don't. Many don't even have the ability to be all that interested in it. Modern book choices are bad because many are still too complex. Drop Catcher in the Rye, bring in something simpler. This is forced upon them, you might as well lube it up.

[Anonymous No.5124858]

>>5124743
I'm >>5124675

You are critiquing me for something that I haven't said. I agree with using books to teach cultural studies as well as literature and agree to each of the books that you mentioned, but I don't see how LiA would be more applicable in that case than AILD. All of Faulkner based in Yoknapatawpha County can be taught as a history/social studies work, just possibly a different lesson. I think the most effective for this would be A,A!, as it covers more than the other three combined, but as I said it may be too difficult to teach. All the Pretty Horses would serve dual purposes as well.

[Anonymous No.5124862]

>>5124851
Here's an idea--what about some of the more "classic" science-fiction, like Asimov and Clarke? Their ideas aren't bad, they're simple enough for high-school children, and above all they would be adventurous and exciting in a very appealing way to people who probably haven't voluntarily read anything other than Harry Potter and whatever YA fiction is in vogue at the time.

[Anonymous No.5124868]

>>5124828
Lolita is great for high schoolers because it has literary merit and it's controversial in a way that will make teenagers want to read it.

[Anonymous No.5124877]

>>5124851

I'll admit from the get-go that you are right about my background, I went to a prep school. This may simply be a conflict of priority between the two of us, I think it would be a better function to teach difficult books in the hopes that a small handful of students would read them and excel than "lube" them with easier literature that most students will just sparknote either way. Why waste the time of the top students by catering to students who don't care and won't try either way?

[Anonymous No.5124892]

>>5124725
I read both Heart of Darkness and Metamorphosis in my high school lit classes.

[Anonymous No.5124899]

>>5124892
So did I, but it wasn't on the list given in the OP and they weren't mentioned explicitly in the thread prior to my post, so I decided to list them regardless.

[Anonymous No.5124924]

Just dropping in from New Zealand. The only one of these on my high school reading list was To Kill a Mocking Bird.

I voluntarily read 1984, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby and Animal Farm on my own time.

I haven't heard of half of the rest of the OP's listed novels. I mean, I know of Frankenstein, Farenheit 451, Clockwork Orange and Catcher in the Rye, but I haven't actually read them, and I've never heard of the rest.

We had a lot of New Zealand literature, with authors like Patricia Grace and Katherine Mansfield to work our way through.

[Anonymous No.5124934]

Great Expectations - abridged, if there is such a thing. In my school, it's read in Honors classes over the course of the year - I utilize it in teaching my students the more abstract concepts of morality. It's also chock full of symbolism!

[Anonymous No.5124950]

I teach high school English and this upcoming school year I'm going to be teaching an elective course called Modern Literature. Assuming it gets enough people signed up for it, that is (right now there are only 6 registered, there needs to be 10 or more for the class to carry forward). Anyway my syllabus is thus:

Week 1-3: James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Week 4-5: short unit on Jazz Age poetry (Eliot, Pound, cummings, etc)
Week 6-9: Joseph Heller - Catch-22
Week 10-14: Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Week 15-16: Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
Week 17-18: short unit on literature/poetry of the civil rights era (Maya Angelou, nonfiction works of King/Malcom X, etc.)
(Christmas Break)
Week 19-20: Albert Camus - The Stranger
Week 20-23: unit on short stories (selections from Ficciones, Lost in the Funhouse, Oblivion: Stories, and a little Stephen King to keep the kids interested)
Week 24-28: John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Week 28-30: Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon
(Spring Break)
Week 31-33: unit on creative nonfiction/essays (selections from DFW, Sedaris, and others)
Week 34-36: Cormac McCarthy - The Road

I haven't finalized this syllabus so I'm open to suggestions. I'm trying to hit some of the high notes of 20th century/21st century stuff that the normal curriculum doesn't.

[Anonymous No.5124979]

>>5124950
Too much guided reading or hand-holding. Perhaps give a choose-your-own-book essay for the first half and gauge their tastes from there to change the syllabus for the second half accordingly?

Do you teach at a private high school or did I merely suffer from big-fish-little-pond-syndrome that I am so astonished you would even suggest such a high-calibre syllabus?

Joyce, Pound, cummings, Camus I can vouch for as suitable for the age group. I suggest also some other Latin American stuff than Borges, perhaps add the combination of Whitman, Neruda and Borges for poetry's sake. And to compliment Camus, some Sartre and Beauvoir instead of A Confederacy of Dunces. And no German literature? Nachkriegsliteratur and Migrantenliteratur is some of the most important Western literature in this day and age I gather. Kafka, Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann would be superb. And if you want any more female representation, though it is a loathsome term, I suggest Woolf, A Room of One's Own, and Duras, Hiroshima mon amour or L'Amant.

Have you considered adding any Dostoyevsky?

[Anonymous No.5124997]

>>5124979
I meant complement, of course. Anyways, literature is best a self-taught subject, so best of luck.

[Anonymous No.5125014]

>>5124950
That's too much for a single year.


Too many entire novels.

Need to mix it up with novel -> poem -> play

1-2 weeks even for a short book will allow no room for depth


unless it's for a gifted class but even then probably expecting too much.

[Anonymous No.5125019]

>>5124847
The problem is there is just limited amounts of time and motivation. Primary school is not used to really educate, it is used to make decent, well-round and well adjusted adults who can then go on to college and learn what they want. Trying to create literatis in high school is as bad an idea as trying to make everyone be a scientist by pushing STEM curriculum. This class >>5124950 is more of a college prep or AP class than what should be average H.S. curriculum.

>>5124858
I think LiA is far more useful because it can teach race relations and history, that's why I think it should replace TKAMB. AILD has alot of literary merit but relatively far less historically. I can't think of another Faulkner that has as much to say about race as LiA.
>>5124784
Atticus is a Jesus figure, and the entire world of that book is divided into white=evil and black=innocent. That may have been a useful message 50 years ago or so, but these days race relations in America have evolved to a whole nother animal. LiA, I feel, captures this better, with Christmas being confused and ashamed of his race, and showing that both blacks and whites can be exclusive, prejudiced, and capable of evil. For the white oppression of the time, it even goes beyond simply "whites are mean" and hints at the psychology behind why racism exists (i.e., that soldier guy with his deep-seated insecurity at never serving during wartime).

All in all, times have changed and I think some of the books like TKAMB and the dystopian novels are less relevant today.

[Anonymous No.5125026]

>>5124950
>english teacher
>gets all his ideas from /lit/


this is a syllabus for /lit/ - senior year

[Anonymous No.5125051]

>>5124979
I'm sticking strictly to things published after WWI. So stuff like Dostoyevsky and Whitman don't work.

I considered perhaps doing some units where the students choose their books from a much longer list, but I would prefer to do that later in the year rather than up-front.

I agree my list doesn't include enough writers from outside America. That's partly the fault of my own schooling (I focused on American literature in university).

I could do something interesting with the Camus unit, where I perhaps have the students read The Stranger in class, and then something like Nausea on their own time, then compare and contrast Camus/Sartre. Getting some ideas here...

>>5125014
It's a prep school, and the class is listed as an honors course, so I expect the students would be motivated enough to do the reading.

I think I would rather assign some of Plath or perhaps O'Connor instead of Woolf. The Bell Jar was previously on my syllabus in place of Song of Solomon.

[Anonymous No.5125294]

>>5123912
Out of those, I only read one in high school - Fahrenheit 451
I know other classes in my school did Gatsby, 1984, and To Kill a Mockingbird, but I read the first 2 on my own

One book we studied which I think would be cool to have read in more high schools was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
We also got to watch the movie (which is great) after to compare the two

[Anonymous No.5125313]

>>5123922
>started grapes of wrath and put it down (too young probably, too FPS-conditioned, halo-addicted)
what? i'm reading it now at 19 and its great.

[Anonymous No.5125484]

Hoe-kay, I likin' to take a stab at this ...

For the record, I've been out awhile. This is a retrospective wish list, and minor re-emphasis on stuff we did do.

Yeah, I realize I'm smokin' them dream dank for most of these.

Shakespeare - keep. Can't cover all here but keep to the more controversial murderous stuff, one or two of the plays.

Canterbury tales - again don't try to do them all, just hit one or two of the more wild ones.

Hunter S. Thompson - Strange Rumblings in Aztlan, followed by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It might be nice to see what real journalism can be.

The Great Gatsby - Do HST as above, first. You'll be surprised how popular this will be once they gain some insight and a better feel through HST's modern treatment ...

Pull out some Graham Greene. A Quiet American was topical before, during, and after - what with our Vietnam redux in Iraq, et. al. Also, let's tackle some religion while we're at it - The Power and the Glory. I think it well to show the work of someone who took his faith seriously, while holding sanctimony in such contempt. An author admittedly flawed, yet true to himself.

Hm ... what else ...

[Anonymous No.5125590]

1984 - drop. It's meaningless, like trying to teach gardening to galley slaves. Show them Homage to Catalonia, or Down and Out in Paris and London instead. Both would be best. Then they can stumble on the dystopias later and, finally, see.

Frankenstein - yeah. Everyone knows the story though and through, from modern adaptions! Boring, boring, boring! So why do this again? In spite of knowing the story, I discovered I didn't. The original was a surprise, and most interesting for what was emphasized, and how it was emphasized, in the original.

Clockwork Orange - yeah. One can throw the zinger on here by cutting the last chapter, doing the analysis and essays, then assigning the last chapter as bit of a final to ponder on their own without requiring analysis.

The Crying of Lot 49, and hope the more adventurous continue on all by their own.

Finally, do a class vote. Stretch the teacher for a bit to analyze something popular. Also a nice way to discover what is popular, what is current. A few minor restrictions are OK - no door-stoppers, and outright pornography can be dismissed (though I'd be pissed if something like The Smithsonian Institution - a Novel, was discarded). Hell, even online fan-fiction. Let's see that 'teach earn that pay for a day.

Eh. That's plenty to mull over. Have at it /lit/.

[Anonymous No.5126155]

>>5123912
At my high school, I read:
Freshman: Animal Farm // The Odyssey // Of Mice and Men // Great Expectations // Julius Caeser
Sophomore: Othello // The Tempest // Jane Eyre
Things Fall Apart // Lord of the Flies // One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // Siddhartha // No Exit // Their Eyes Were Watching God // Tess of d'Urbervilles // The Metamorphosis // My Name is Asher Lev
Junior: The Great Gatsby // Catcher in the Rye // The House on Mango Street // The Scarlet Letter // Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas // Sister Carrie // Adventures of Huckleberry Finn // Hamlet
Senior: Crime and Punishment // The Stranger // Emma // The Return of the Native // Brighton Rock // Richard III // Much Ado About Nothing // Howard's End // Grendel // Beowulf

You can cut half of that generic shit out and replace it with anything halfway decent.

[Anonymous No.5126196]

I think with the dystopia novels we should start by actually giving kids some incites into the political tracts and ideologies of the past and present that aren't "Stalin, Churchill and Hitler were evil lmao, Ghandhi and MLK 4 lyfe"

[Anonymous No.5126212]

>>5126196
I don't see how that would be worth it. I think The Kite Runner might be more relevant instead of the cold war/nazi bullshit. But theyll probably only start to teach that in a few decades when it too becomes history.

[Anonymous No.5126234]

>>5125590
If you're gonna cut the last chapter then you may as week just have them watch the movie, THEN let them read the last chapter.

[Anonymous No.5126237]

>>5126212
My point was I don't think we need to educate kids into hating our enemies, we should present all the views there are in a neutral fashion
Kite Runner's just gonna make kids think Arabs are pedos

[Anonymous No.5126238]

I notice people keep saying to remove most of the dystopias. In general I agree, but I wanted to point out that if we only kept one it really ought to be Brave New World as it arguably applies at least as well now as when it was written. I'd also keep 1984 for contrast. The rest should be dropped to make room for something else, and I say that as someone who loved both 451 and Animal Farm.

[Anonymous No.5126262]

>>5126238
I also liked The Giver

[Anonymous No.5126400]

>>5126262
I did too, but it's not exactly high school level.

[Anonymous No.5126453]

>>5123912
I read The Sound and the Fury in high school and I loved it (except for the parts with Benji, that was 2deep4me back then). I think it's more of a college-level book (hence me reading it in AP Lit), so I don't think it should be taught in high school. Haven't read other Faulkner yet, so I don't if that would work.

[Anonymous No.5126474]

>>5124877
because that's not how public education works

[Anonymous No.5126654]

I think every high school in America should be removing To Kill a Mockingbird from its studies immediately and replacing it with Invisible Man.

TKAM is a children's book about racism that teaches generations of young whites to see blacks as helpless primitives in need of the help of sophisticated white northerners while poor, southern whites are categorized as inherently racist and trashy individuals because of their social class.
Invisible Man teaches a nuanced view of race that can get kids to actually THINK about race relations instead of accepting simplified narratives as truth.

[Anonymous No.5126686]

>>5124309
Check out sacred geometry, sacred numbers, etc.

Books:

Math for mystics: from the fibonacci sequence... you'll find it
quadrivium: the four liberal arts of... you'll find it

math isn't just the shit they teach you in school. It's actually really interesting.

[Anonymous No.5126694]

>>5126686
I remember my math teacher in H.S. spent a day talking about non-Euclidian geometry that blew my mind. But to be fair you really should learn the basics up through calc first, and that does take years of dry instruction.

[Anonymous No.5126704]

>>5126694
Yeah, definitely. But you don't need to know trig/calc for what I've mentioned. Just basic arithmetic.

[Anonymous No.5126710]

>>5124443
>The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
To Kill a Mockingbird was by far the worst book I read in high school and should be replaced by Lonely Hunter in all curricula

[Anonymous No.5126714]

Why don't more high schoolers read Portnoy's Complaint?

[Anonymous No.5126746]

>>5124950
>Lolita

lets not and say we did

[Anonymous No.5126765]

>>5124252
I'm with you anon.

I had always liked reading when I was younger. Granted, they were always shitty books but I enjoyed the escape.

But as I got into high school, reading became much more of a chore than an actual hobby. I felt like the assignment of summaries and questions of the books we had to read completely ruined any chance of feeling immersed into a potentially good book.

Every time I would start to get interested, the looming sense of obligation made me lose interest. And I hate that I didn't give more of an effort. I really do. I just wished I was more motivated to see it in a different light.
Anyways, I graduated a year ago and I'm starting to get back into reading. I just finished Fahrenheit 451 (don't blame me, I'm just now trying to restart my interests) and I loved it. I hope it lasts. This feeling that is.

[Anonymous No.5126770]

>>5124950
Others have spoken to it already but this could be a great class if you dumped some of the books. There are always kids who can handle a load like this but if you're teaching honors classes at a prep school these kids are going to be taking your class in addition to honors/AP history and math and science and doing sports and volunteering and some might have jobs. I look at that list as someone out of school who mostly reads as my entertainment and that list would be no problem but I went to a similar school and if you gave me that syllabus I would probably just read summaries online.

If you want to make the class memorable cut it down a lot and spend way more time on discussion and analysis. What you have there will have kids hating you and skipping the reading assignments.

[Anonymous No.5126778]

Add more Greeks, the kids these days don't have enough Greeks.

[Anonymous No.5126787]

Replace all the holocaust and slavery novels with actual literature

[Anonymous No.5126816]

>>5124950
>modern lit
>pynchon

[Anonymous No.5127299]

>>5125019
>I can't think of another Faulkner that has as much to say about race as LiA.
>the entire world of that book is divided into white=evil and black=innocent
What the fuck am I reading? >>5125051
Nah man, don't give them Nausea for Sarte. I'd suggest the Existentialism as Humanism essay, and maybe No Exit or the Flies. Give them a good comparison. Are you allowed to assign "suggested" reading over the breaks? I went to a prep school that always gave us some books to read during Christmas/Spring break, that might be a good time to bring in the Bell Jar. I think it's one they could do on their own. Also, what do you think Plath accomplished that makes her a viable alternative to Woolf? I would think Mrs Dalloway or To The Lighthouse would be awesome in that syllabus
>>5126474
Isn't the point of this thread to try and make public school better? Why would we just accept things as is, without arguing for its benefits?
>>5126778
I actually agree with this. Assigning some books from Odyssey/Illiad, as well as some of the more fun stuff from Plato.

[Anonymous No.5129327]

white people are retards. black people, as well, but at least they know it.

[Anonymous No.5129333]

>>5123912
I think we should drop one of the five grim-dark future books. Everything else is perfect. Some of the calls to update TKAMB with something more modern about race is also good.

[Anonymous No.5129377]

Why don't they read Heart of Darkness? Is it because of the whole "nigger" thing?

[Anonymous No.5129598]

>>5129377
i read it in ap lit senior year

[Anonymous No.5129699]

More Brit lit. No one gets out without reading Wuthering Heights.

[Anonymous No.5130015]

>>5129377
It's read in AP courses or other higher level classes. It was kinda tough for me when I read it a few years back, so I'd imagine that average level students would either not be able to understand it or get buttflustered over Africa being portrayed in a negative light.

[Anonymous No.5130267]

>>5124686
> I think average age here is almost finished with university
You're fucking high, friendo. Average age here is high school, just a decidedly more pretentious version.

[Anonymous No.5130289]

>>5123912
that's an amazing list compared to what I had. fucking a separate peace and the chosen?

[Anonymous No.5130349]

I wouldn't have a required reading list, maybe a suggested reading.

Being told what to read almost turned me off of writing and reading altogether, two things I loved as a kid before it was forced upon me.

[Anonymous No.5130364]

I have no idea whether anyone agrees, but I know that if I could go back and read certain books in high school they'd be:

Freshman: Heart of Darkness, The Stranger, Some nietzsche
Sophmore: A Portrait of the Artist as a young man
Junior: Crime and Punishment
Senior: Brother's Karamazov, The Republic

[Anonymous No.5130890]

>>5123912
No need to talk shit about 1984. Today it's even more relevant because the government's capability to watch us via technology is increasing, and it's important to educate people about the dangers of over-surveillance.

[Anonymous No.5130894]

>>5129333
Farenheit 451 because it's the silliest

[Anonymous No.5131562]

>>5124934
PLEB TEACHER DETECTED
> READING DICKENS
> ANALYZING DICKENS
> TEACHING DICKENS
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I BET YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE ASSHATS THAT INSIST PEOPLE READ THE BOOK AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF THEIR LIVES, THAT SORT OF BULLSHIT!

AHAHSHAHAHAHAHAJAHAHAHAHA

>>5130890
>IMPLYING THE MEDIA DOESN'T TEACH IDIOTS THAT ALREADY
AHAHAHAHA

[Anonymous No.5131615]

To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Catcher in the Rye
Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
1984
Brave New World
Animal Farm
Farenheit 451
Clockwork Orange
Of Mice and Men
Great Gatsby
The Old Man and the Sea

wow, that's a diabolical list.
it's all to condition kids to a dystopian environment. The reason that the government doesn't mind showing the kids 1984, Brave New World, and the rest - despite the government being very much like the villain in these books - is because they REVEAL THEIR PLANS TO YOU so that you implicitly comply, i.e. you think to yourself "wow, our government is getting pretty close to 1984", but do nothing about it, therefore you implicitly agree with the government's plans. That's the psychological technique they use. It's called "revelation of the method".

Literature is just propaganda. I'm not coming from a Marxist perspective when I say that. I made a thread like a week ago saying the same. The point of literature throughout history has been to teach youths the morals/ideals of the culture. That stands today. The reason that they teach kids 1984 is because they want them to love Big Brother.

[Anonymous No.5131619]

>>5124950
Modern Literature is garbage. Please teach your kids the classics (I mean the classical classics, not "the classics") so that they become acquainted with the concept of virtue and don't live their entire lives in filthy subjectivism.

[Anonymous No.5131660]

>>5131615
You know. Literature has always reflected politics. They are pretty much the same thing. Romanticism and 19th century Liberalism were the same, championing "passion" over reason and morals and institutions.
Realism/Naturalism is the Realpolitik of the late 19th and 20th century where there are no ideals, only blunt "Nature".
Modernism in literature portrayed cultural relativism and the breaking down of norms.
Postmodernism is just madness and schizophrenia for our mad, schizoid 20th-21st century TV politics.

If you teach people Romantic/Realist/Modern/Postmodern literature you are more or less a shill/propagandist for all the dirty Bourgeois capitalists, filthy Socialist revolutionaries, and all the rest of the scum that are turning humanity into cattle and bringing about a World State tyranny. Forget all your "literature teaches us what it means to be a human being", "literature explores the depths of the soul", and all that romantic crap - if you really believed that you'd be teaching philosophy or theology - literature is propaganda and as with all propaganda the most important thing to know is WHO IS BEHIND IT AND WHAT IS THEIR INTENT?

I've just opened a great work of Realist fiction - War & Peace by Tolstoy - and took a random passage, here:

>While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral.

In Classical and Medieval literature when a character died it would be introduced in a dramatic fashion, it would be down in a solemn and respectful tone, and perhaps with a wise proverb tucked in for reflection. But in the enlightened Realism of 19th century lit such a thing as human mortality is an insignificance to passed over indifferently like magazine gossip. The underlying message being, HUMAN BEINGS DON'T MATTER. Which is an important message when you're trying to bring gigantic Nation States into the world that totally dominate the human being.

[Anonymous No.5131682]

>>5131660
oh, I missed one of the nuances of the Tolstoy passage in my haste: the wry sarcasm directed at the profiteers looking to make money out of death. I can see the same being done in a satirical piece by an ancient Greek or Roman author, but the difference is that they would write pieces specifically designated as being satire - the ancients were very strict in their forms/genres, a tragedy was a tragedy for example, none of this "tragicomedy" vaudeville crap. But Tolstoy shoves biting little satire into his Grand, Epic work about Humanity, "War & Peace". I don't think you will find the same in Virgil's Aeneid or Homer's Iliad. Point being, that "Realism" again which mixes up all of "Nature" and in its salad-like, "present all things as they are" aesthetic can never portray human beings as having dignity or morals. Again, an important part of Realist literature - undermine man's morals to make him effeminate and savage, easier to control by the State. You might say that Tolstoy never intended that, but that was the effect of his writing.

[Anonymous No.5131718]

Why don't we get rid of the full four years of Shakespeare and Beowulf and replace it with things like critical essays and works chosen by the students. It is important to remember that everyone that uses this board was probably an outlier in education. High school students learn more about how to read and vocabulary from Harry Potter than they do Shakespeare. Leave Shakespeare to elective classes and college.

[Anonymous No.5131735]

>>5131660
>>5131682
How to we stop this nihilism then?

[Anonymous No.5131769]

>>5131735
When it comes to "stopping nihilism" we are talking about taking action against it, which must mean political action. So we have to look at the political roots of nihilism - who is funding it, and who is benefiting from it (because make no mistake, people are funding and benefiting from it. Plato talks about how the elite classes in the society create culture and define the content of the lives of the people beneath them).
Who benefits from nihilism?

- the Capitalists/financiers who want a person addicted to consumer goods to fill the emptiness in their meaningless lives
- the Socialists/revolutionaries who want to spread discontent among people so that they will rebel against society/institutions and serve the revolutionary Party

The people that I have just described have all the political and economic power in the world. Nihilism won't stop until they've decided that nihilism has served its ultimate purpose (which I think is to demoralize people and make them so apathetic that they are unable to resist a great tyranny. Plato, again, talks about this. He says in his Symposium that the tyrants that took over Athens found it necessary to demoralize people and break up their bonds of love, because people with strong bonds and morals were more brave an able to resist the tyrants).

To stop nihilism that is spread across Civilization you would have to take control of the Civilization and spread culture (religion, literature, music, arts, etc.) that are not nihilistic throughout that Civilization. To stop nihilism on a personal level you just have to change the culture that you are being cultured by (religion, literature, music, arts, etc.) while sheltering yourself from all the nihilistic elements in the culture around you.

>Here men are demoralized in the shortest possible time on the largest possible scale, at the cheapest possible price.
Kierkegaard on the Press/Media.

[Anonymous No.5131771]

Canadian student here

>To Kill a Mockingbird
Awful reductive book, replace with Chester Himes: If He Hollers Let Him Go
>Lord of the Flies
Replace with Catcher in the Rye (No we don't read that)
>1984
Replace with Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
>Oryx and Crake
Replace with literally anything, perhaps the worst book I've ever read
>Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
It's OK, we read it in grade 9, kids aren't going to grasp Ben Katchor
>Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet
Great, so long as you have an English teacher who understands the emotional complexity of the language

[Anonymous No.5131777]

>>5131718
This is OP btw, also the same guy that said books should serve a dual purpose.
I think Shakespeare should be an exception to that because his work is so universally relevant. Plus, where the hell did you go that got four years of it? I think most high schoolers read R&J for sure, and maybe one or two other like Midsummer or Hamlet. They don't take long.

Also, as other people have mentioned, I forgot to put A Separate Peace on that list. That book was pretty lame, good ideas but boring as all hell.

>>5130890
>>5131615
My problem with 1984 is my same problem with TKAMB, the overall concept of it is relevant today, but the execution isn't. We all know that a totalitarian police state today will look FAR different than the one in 1984. After the Global War on Terror, fear and complacency are used over outright oppression; the world has evolved and teaching kids that totalitarianism is "a bootprint on the face of humanity" just gives the greenlight to Obama to drone-kill people in other countries and for leftist groups to outlaw the word nigger and non-gender neutral pronouns, as long as we have legal weed. Note: I don't have a book in mind to replace 1984, maybe Brave New World is more relevant but I haven't read it.

After monitoring this thread I still think that A Light in August should replace TKAMB and The Kite Runner should replace one of the dystopian novels. And I think The Last Picture Show should replace A Separate Peace.

[Anonymous No.5131792]

>>5131777
I spent three weeks one each of these books over all four years of high school:
R+J, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and The Tempest. Is this not the normal practice for high school?

[Anonymous No.5131836]

>>5123912
every novel taught in the schools create a standard. why do you want your favorite novels serve to indoctrinate literature in people?

[Anonymous No.5131849]

>>5131792
I think it depends on where you go to school but generally I think 5 is a bit excessive.

R&J is a given because its accessible and high schoolers love it
Othello is a step up in quality but still good because it examines racism.
After that, some schools will toss you either another big boy Shakespeare, or a comedy, or both. I don't see why high schoolers should read the Tempest, or Hamlet AND Macbeth, but if it didn't eat up too much time I guess its okay. Alot of this depends on where you go to school and whether you are in AP Classes or take English electives.

Side note: I went to 3 different high schools. The first was a trade school in the Boston area where the teachers were just happy to have the kids show up and put away their knives and drugs. The second was an excellent high school in a small, moderately affluent town in central Mass. This school was great, we had a full transcendental section with Thoreau and Emerson (probably cus we were in MA, duh but oh well), and we read Grapes of Wrath and all kinds of great books and had good discussions. My senior year I went to school in a very wealthy suburb of Houston and the school was terrible. It was a blue ribbon school full of rich kids with new cars and girls with plastic surgery but even then the curriculum for AP English senior year was lower level than what I got at the good MA school in my sophmore year, regular classes. Texas schools have alot of problems because of the way they are funded by the muncipalities, and because they're assessment system is totally fucked so schools play into getting blue-ribboned instead of actually teaching well.
tl;dr
Blue state schools are far superior (unless you live in the city). I absolutely love Texas and there is no where else I'd rather live but the public education system here is shameful.

[Anonymous No.5131916]

>>5131849
I read those five in a school system on the east coast of MA - I guess to reinforce what you're saying.

[Anonymous No.5131928]

>>5131769
you say don´t believe in the humanism they teach you and at the same time you say we have to "sheltering from all the nihilistic elements".
you shouldn´t forget that the concept of nihilism is a form of defense from all kinds of believers in something, a form of demonize the people who don´t believe in her patterns.
the nihilism never can´t help to revolutionaries. it´s a enemy of them. you misunderstood totally the word.

[Anonymous No.5131979]

I can't understand why you americans complain so much about reading all these decent novels in high school. I mean, really, maybe it's the whole high school/english class context that makes it annoying, but I enjoyed reading all books listed by OP.

[Anonymous No.5132011]

>>5123912

Frankly, making high school students read full lenght novels is useless. The industrial style education offered by the US isnt fit for that. There isnt enough time or focus to make the majority of kids enjoy those books and their lenght will only make them resent towards literature. The focus should be moved towards short stories and novellas, but short stories primary.
>a clean well lighted place
>spotted horses
>the library of babel
>the queen of spades
>Saint Julian the Hospitalier
>The Death
>The tell tale heart
>a gentle creature
>the third shore of the river
>so on....