What do you think of High School/Secondary School Req. Reading?

What do you think of High School/Secondary School required reading for Engish classes? I had a look at my old school work recently (yes I kept them, sad I know). When I was in school at years 10-11 we had to read the following:
Of Mice and Men -Steinbeck (novel)
A View from the Bridge - Arthur Miller (play about US immigration in the 1950s)
The Red Room -H.G. Wells (short story)
The Monkey's Paw -W.W. Jacobs (horror short story)
The Withered Arm -Thomas Hardy (short story)

After this there was a selection of poems. The most prevalent poet in my English anthology was Seamus Heaney if I remember correctly. Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning etc. Also some Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou, with many others.

I think personally, that considering this was a British Secondary School, the two main readings we had to do (Of Mice and Men and A View From the Bridge) shouldn't both have been American.
I just remembered aswell that we also read part of Romeo and Juliet.

What do you think? Do you think that a country should focus mainly on it's own authour's work in schools? What did you read in school and what do you think should have been set for you?

I do not think a country should mainly focus on its own literature, though students should be taught about the differences (if there are any). Or for languages other than English, not too much of the rest.

What I do think is that students should be able to pick their own books to read. Apart from general musts like Shakespeare (for English in particular) and poems (you do not lose much time reading them, only analysing), I don't think that everyone should be compelled to read the same book.

It is rather good to leave students a varied list and have them choose something they like than to compell them to read something they abhor. I was in that position and I detested reading for a very long time.

But it takes a lot of work for the teacher, who has to read all the books on the list, yet it also provides them with varied reading if one has to write an essay. Imagine correcting twenty or even 100 about the same topic!

John Steinbeck would have been banned because of his supposed communist leanings. We read A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. I didn't read it until years later and ralized what I had missed. The rest of the poems and short stories were taken from an anthology book. This was the Junior year. We read Macbeth and Hamlet plus antholgy selections in the Senior year. I hated it. The teachers were abysmally poor, and I didn't read anything until I was twenty-one. Now, I have read all the plays of Shakespeare plus most of the classics of the Western world. Poor techers got me off to a bad start, and I had to learn how to read and what to read myself. I never think of a country of origin when I read. Like most English speaking people, I read from the Western world and Russia. In high school, one should read from a well-rounded curriculum of the best for that age, not particularly authors of the country you live in.

Attending secondary school in Canada I didn't encounter very much American literature. I think the only American novel we read was A Separate Peace. Otherwise, it was all god awful Canadian literature and the usual English lit suspects.

In my French classes I can't remember much of what we read. My last year of high school I remember we did Maupassant's Une Vie, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir, and that's all I really remember. In shorter works we read L'homme qui plantait des arbres, Baudelaire and some others. I also vaguely remember a lot of French short stories about fur traders and canoes.

I remember having to do a spoken book review in front of the class, aswell as having to read an extract. While everyone else was doing presentations on Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code (it was just before the film was released), I chose The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, which is now one of my favourite novels. I remember not having prepared at all and panicking when I stood up. My teacher gasped in delight when she saw my choice. I chose, for controversey, an extract on her receiving shock therapy, then told the class about her suicide after the book was published. "She stuck her head in an oven", I think I said. Not my most tactful moment. It worried me at the time that people of that age were still interested in Harry Potter, but once I reached Uni the people around me were reading some classic lit so I was happy.

my impression of high school english class isn't too bad. I'm only about 2 years out of high school, and I found that we had a pretty good variety. Even though I was also in a Canadian school system I found that we didn't read much, if any Canadian literature. We did one Shakespeare work each year- Romeo and Juliet in Grade 9, Macbeth in grade 10, Othello in grade 11, and Hamlet in grade 12. I found that the teacher's weren't too bad in their analysis, but that coud just be due to my complete ignorance of the books at the time. Other books we read (that I remember) were:To kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, and All the Pretty Horses. We also got a free choice book for grades 11 and 12, but they had to be award winners, so no Harry Potter or Dan Brown for us. I chose The Life of Pi (the only Canadain book of the lot, as far as I know), and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I felt it was fairly well rounded, if very western- centred. The only down side was the other students whining constantly about the books-except for all the pretty horses, which was painful beyond belief to read.

Oh, we also did a unit on poetry and short stories, which is where most of our Canadain content came in. I can't recall the titles of them, though.

We did that one shakespeare play a year too, although high school in Quebec runs from grade 7 to 11. We did in order starting in grade 8: Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, and Hamlet.

The god awful canlit was all in short story and poetry form, which is probably why I don't remember much of it. I do remember doing a fair amount of American Poetry, I remember doing Roethke, Plath, and Frost in high school.

Edit: I remember one of the canlit authors, Hugh Garner, I remember doing The Moose and the Sparrow in grade 9. I'm sure we also read some Mordecai Richler. I also vaguely remember a Scottish born Quebec poet, but I can't put my finger on his name.

We're required to take four English literature courses in CEGEP (which a sort of mandatory jr. college thing in Quebec that takes 2 years). In CEGEP I took a course in American literature so we read Poe, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Malamud.

I think political correctness has robbed students of a few outstanding texts; yes, there is a prostitute in Catcher In The Rye, and that unmentionable "N" work in Twain, but those are some great books that I really enjoyed during my youth and teen years.

We just had a VERY short government debate here in Canada about rewording our national anthem because of political correctness. Thank goodness Canadians had national pride and a little common sense for once.

Nobody goes overboard with political correctness us British do! They banned a nursery rhyme (Baa Baa Black Sheep) because they thought it was racist!

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Originally Posted by Night_Lamp

We just had a VERY short government debate here in Canada about rewording our national anthem because of political correctness. Thank goodness Canadians had national pride and a little common sense for once.

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A leak from the Tories said Harper brought up the subject because he thought it would improve his poll numbers amongst women :rolleyes5:. Didn't really have much to do with being PC, just a cheap political ploy that backfired.

Okay being one who still is stuck in high school English classes, I must say that hardly any reading is in fact done, even in the advanced classes I'm taking.

Things improve as the years go by, for example I was very excited that we got to read Antigone last semester. Too bad I already read it two years prior lol.

What doesn't bother me is the reading list (because there virtually isn't any), but rather that when we do read something, we never get into any sort of in-depth discussion about it and I'm left in frustration when other students are simply trying to identify the different characters in a story.

I know, I'm the bad guy for sounding so pretentious, but how can one bear a classroom of teenagers trying to figure out who is Antigone and who is this Oedipus fellow.

In my Jr year (11th) American Literature was required. My Sr year (12th) English Literature was required. I also think that there ought to be some leeway for the student to choose SOME of their reading, but that would make it very hard for the teachers to grade if there wasn't a certain reading curriculum established.

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Originally Posted by BjorkPlease

Nobody goes overboard with political correctness us British do! They banned a nursery rhyme (Baa Baa Black Sheep) because they thought it was racist!

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How did they figure that one? And what does "banned" imply?

Perhaps banned was not the correct choice of word. Some nursery schools in Oxfordshire changed the lyrics to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" and some elsewhere to "Baa Baa Happy Sheep". The rhyme has colonial links: 'Three bags full' refers to the three bags of wool which the slaves were told to collect and 'yes sir, yes sir' is how the slaves would reply to the slave masters when told to do a task. Basically it originates from slavery.
It wasn't legally banned but there was an attempt by Birmingham council to ban it, which failed. The newspapers here probably exaggerated it all which they often to when it comes to political correctness. Most people here don't like all the PC talk and the term "Political Correctness Gone Mad" is quite common.
I wouldn't be suprised if they tried to change the words of Rule Britannia next!:
"Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons, never will be slaves."

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Originally Posted by BjorkPlease

Some nursery schools in Oxfordshire changed the lyrics to "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep"

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When will people be 'upset' that homosexual sheep are being promoted? :lol:

I was just thinking that....




...yep, I found a picture...
http://www.freefoto.com/images/01/48...-Sheep_web.jpg

There are REAL black sheep in the world. I feel your pain concerning Political Correctness. When are we just going to accept the past as the way it was? If we don't teach our children that SOME things actually happened, then they won't have a chance to be appalled by them. It's a matter of a few generations that history will repeat itself.

Reading this makes me realize how lucky I was in my high school... not only did we read Huckleberry Finn (despite the presence of the N word), we also watched Apocalypse Now as a companion to the Heart of Darkness!

My advice to any student attending a High School that bans books:

Read Farenheit 451.

Create your own summer reading curriculum.

The answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.
- Margaret Atwood

Thats really quite interesting myrna22. I assume you're in the US? I would think that you teaching in a private school wouldmake a difference certainly to what you read. It's interesting to see that in school I read quite similar material to what you are teaching.

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Originally Posted by BjorkPlease

Thats really quite interesting myrna22. I assume you're in the US? I would think that you teaching in a private school wouldmake a difference certainly to what you read. It's interesting to see that in school I read quite similar material to what you are teaching.

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Why would being in a private school make a difference to what we read?

I don't understand your point.

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Originally Posted by myrna22

Why would being in a private school make a difference to what we read?

I don't understand your point.

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I'm not sure of your location but here in England children in private schools almost always have higher reading ages. I'm certain you would never find a state school reading "The Brothers Karamazov".

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Originally Posted by BjorkPlease

I'm not sure of your location but here in England children in private schools almost always have higher reading ages. I'm certain you would never find a state school reading "The Brothers Karamazov".

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The answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.
- Margaret Atwood

My teachers were so poor I didn't read a thing from high school graduation untul I was 21. Studying Shakespeare consisted in listening to every member of the class recite, very stumblingly, Hamlet's soliliquy. Can you imagine how boring that was? Thank god for people like our poster.

I enlisted in the Air Force and was sent overseas to Japan. The service libraries were pretty good. I would learn about a novel then inquire about it at the base library. I saw a movie called A Place in the Sun so I read the book the movie was based on, Dreiser's An American Tragedy. I viewed movies at the base theater, then read the book. This was how I was introduced to Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, The Brothers Karamazov (this was my first intro to the Russians by the movie with Yul Brynner as Dmitri, Richard Basehart as Ivan, and a very, very young Captain Kirk as Alyosha), and War and Peace.

I attended college after the service, but took engineering instead of liberal arts. I had many good professors, including one in an elective course who introduced me to Dickens, Somerset Maughan, Thomas Hardy, and Laurence Sterne.

I think with my affinity to literature I would have done something in the field, bur I was really turned off by the high school teachers I had. A good teacher, especially when you are just starting to read, is worth his/her weight in gold.

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Originally Posted by Zwiki

I think that the English class should just focus on one area of literature. British one year and American the next.

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The answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.
- Margaret Atwood

I despair of secondary school required reading. It is woefully inadequate. But then again instilling a love of literature is not part of the agenda of National Curriculum or the state schools which follow it. Currently, on average one novel a year is the standard in most state schools, one novel a year! I read equivalent to that in a day, every day. So for me it is a bit of a sick joke, but like I said schools have other agendas and pressures so it is hardly surprising. If anybody can come through a standard state school with love of reading then they are surely in the minority and have somehow slipped through the net.

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Originally Posted by Neely

I despair of secondary school required reading. It is woefully inadequate. But then again instilling a love of literature is not part of the agenda of National Curriculum or the state schools which follow it. Currently, on average one novel a year is the standard in most state schools, one novel a year! I read equivalent to that in a day, every day. So for me it is a bit of a sick joke, but like I said schools have other agendas and pressures so it is hardly surprising. If anybody can come through a standard state school with love of reading then they are surely in the minority and have somehow slipped through the net.

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In the U.S. technically "instilling a love of literature and learning" is one of the supposed goals of school. Everyone I know certainly includes that in their mission statements, or other buzzwords like teaching our students to be "lifelong learners." However, it still has all the flaws you describe. They read like one novel a year, a few poems, a play maybe.

On the other hand, even when we did have assigned reading I remember just not reading any of the books or only skimming them. Why the hell would I read those boring *** books when I could be playing Final Fantasy 7 or some other pretty graphical video game? Or so I thought when I was younger. Now, of course, I'm an English major who reads all the time. Sometimes, I think it just clicks or doesn't. And sometimes, I think it can click rather late.

Is all garbage! Not enough time devoted to the Greek and Latin stuff; only snippets at a time. Never enough to feel the goodness of it all. I felt no goodness.

Too political and too weak. In America, the kids, they're so stupid. So we read weak stuff. I was always bored in class because I would read far ahead and then have to wait for the stupids to catch up.

Yr 7 - Odyssey and Hatchet (really enjoyed both)
Yr 8 - The Messenger? (can't really remember)
Yr 10 - Much Ado (worst Shakespeare), Cloudstreet (loved), Far From The Madding Crowd, To Kill A Mockingbird
Yr 11 (Eng)- Othello, I'm Not Scared, GATTACA (movie - really enjoyed)
Yr 11 (Lit) - Hamlet, Pride & Prejudice, Brave New World
Yr 12 (Lit) - Much Ado (again :(), The Importance of Being Earnest, Regeneration, T.S. Eliot poetry

(Yr 9 was Romeo and Juliet - but I missed out on that)

The only Australian work we studied was "Cloudstreet" - but I suppose if you're going to pick something Australian it is one of the best :D

Overall I was happy with the quality of what we studied - except for MAAN (which I unfortunately had to do twice because I skipped Yr 9).

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Originally Posted by Art Cordoba

Is all garbage! Not enough time devoted to the Greek and Latin stuff; only snippets at a time. Never enough to feel the goodness of it all. I felt no goodness.

Too political and too weak. In America, the kids, they're so stupid. So we read weak stuff. I was always bored in class because I would read far ahead and then have to wait for the stupids to catch up.

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I think that's too much of a generalisation. I'm sure there are many intelligent American kids. I am curious what "weak stuff" you read though...

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Originally Posted by Neely

I despair of secondary school required reading. It is woefully inadequate. But then again instilling a love of literature is not part of the agenda of National Curriculum or the state schools which follow it. Currently, on average one novel a year is the standard in most state schools, one novel a year! I read equivalent to that in a day, every day. So for me it is a bit of a sick joke, but like I said schools have other agendas and pressures so it is hardly surprising. If anybody can come through a standard state school with love of reading then they are surely in the minority and have somehow slipped through the net.

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A novel a year? Really? How does it take a whole year? We studied at least a novel per term (4/year) plus plays, poems, short stories (and all were studied in-depth, especially in the later years). Maybe it's different elsewhere, but I came through a state school with a great love for literature...

You can't really make people like to read. It's just not in some people; they like to do other things like cook, garden, or paint. I think it's kinda weird when I find people who never read, but I think they must think I'm weird for not being able to garden. I think it's determined by the perspective you have on knowledge. I love to read all kinds of books, and I wasn't greatly influenced to read much of anything in highschool.

I must admit that I loved reading well before I started High School - but I can say with confidence that it didn't adversely effect my love for literature. I believe High School helped to foster my love, and encourage further reading - something which may have helped others establish a love for reading (though I know some were put off by being forced to read).

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Originally Posted by Art Cordoba

Is all garbage! Not enough time devoted to the Greek and Latin stuff; only snippets at a time. Never enough to feel the goodness of it all. I felt no goodness.

Too political and too weak. In America, the kids, they're so stupid. So we read weak stuff. I was always bored in class because I would read far ahead and then have to wait for the stupids to catch up.

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To the first bold, isn't this what college courses specializing in literature of this type are for? High School curriculum is meant to foster and/or develop a love for literature by exposing one to a wide variety of literature spanning literary eras. Albeit, much of the curriculum and class-reading is determined by the teacher, so we're subject to their personal tastes rather than canonized literature (in some occasions). But, taking myself for an example, being an 11th grade AP Language student, I've read two prominent novels from each major period in literature. Specializing in Greek or Latin works robs the students of experiencing different types of literature and different stylistic aproaches to the genre of choice. I'm sure some (perhaps many) students prefer the style and subject content of Kurt Vonnegut and more prominent 20th century authors compared to Homer and the Greek Epics.

To the second bold, excuse my disagreement but that's complete bull****. Congratulations, you've finished the novel early. High school curriculum is molded to teach the student body how to analyze literature by using select (i.e. few) novels as examples. If high school curriculum were a series of rapid-fire readings of novels, I'm sure many more students would despise literature purely from an inability to keep up more than the distaste with literature itself. Just because you've finished the novel early doesn't grant you the right to degrade your peers. You speak from presumption and unsubstantiated arrogance. If you really take issue with the so-called weakness of curriculum then endeavor to read novels on your own time. Read novels outside of the curriculum. You do no more good settling for complacency in reading pure curriculum materials than you do chastising your peers for their reading pace. Disgusting.

We don't have a formal plan on what to read during highschool, so it depends on the teacher. And we didn't read as much as I'd like to.

We read mostly argentine literature:

1st year: "Otroso" (this was a poor choice, because it was a children's book that I had already read when I was 9. So giving this book to 13 year old kids was a mistake. Yeah, this left scars! We had a very difficult exam to enter to that school, on maths and literature and language. And after all the trouble, they give us a kid's book???)

2nd year: "Rosaura a las diez" Marco Denevi. Good book, but I didn't enjoy it at the time. Sometimes it takes years to get the books you've read in highschool.

3rd year: "Crónica de una muerte anunciada" Gabriel García Marquez, and one book that we could choose ("And then they were none").

4th year: "El túnel" Ernesto Sábato.

5th year: "El juguete rabioso" Roberto Arlt, "El cartero de Neruda" (the one of the movie of Neruda and the postman... didn't like it).

Most of these books were really oppressive... not my choice for highschool kids.

And for my English classes I've read (I don't remember the years): "The Great Gatsby", "The Scarlett Letter", "Jamaica Inn", "Animal Farm", "My Family and Other Animals". I prefer these books to the ones I had to read for school.

My school reading was existant (not everyone can say that!) and for Dutch (mothertongue) 2-3 a year.

For French (foreign language 1) 1 a year, later 2

For English (foreign language 2) 1 a year, later 2

For German (foreign language 3) 1 only ever.


But, oh how unfortunate, what sh*t lists we had!!

From 13 years of age to 16, we got nothing but children's books, I think. I couldn't be bothered and I had a hard time reading anything. It was always in themes. Once there was historical novels. I couldn't be bothered as I semed to know more about the period than the writers who were writing about them...

But from 17 on, I discovered adult literature. And with a teacher with a big love for reading, the list was varied, to say the least. Mind you, real analysis and essay writing wasn't really required, but I once made a blinding essay and that sparked my reading. It finally occurred to me that there was something interesting after all to be read... Our courses mainly focussed on literary theory, or how to analyse. At 17 only poetry. Only at 18 (last year) literary history came inot the picture. Literary critique in Dutch is not so prominent.

We only had to read in Eglish from about 17 (?), but two books a year. The first list was varied (same teacher as Dutch) with everything on it (I mean absolutely everything in the canon!), but the second year we all had to read Brave New World. I read it, but didn't love it. We also didn't do a lot of things about that. Though at 17 we had excerpts from Romeo and Juliet which were quite hard for us, and an analysis regarding communism about Animal Farm. No reading them entirely, though. n the las year we all got an abonement on Time magazine and regularly did presentations on articles.

French was an absolute farce. We had to read two books a year from 15 years of age, but the list they supplied was absolutely disgusting every year. I had the hardest time finishing any book in French and for years afterwards was turned off forever. I only ever liked one in those few years and finished it. The books were about: anorexia, psychological problems, teenagers getting pregnant, no forgetting WWII and the jews (apparently a very big trauma in France), sexual abuse and more of the sort of depressing stuff. I am still wondering why they couldn't find us anyting else to read. I have the impression the teachers didn't like to read and so mainly chose short books. Or they maybe thought that we liked those kind of issues... Who will say it. I never saw Molière (only on my own suggestion I was allowed to read it), never saw Dumas, never saw any song of Jacques Brel, never Fontaine, never anything. It still puzzles me. When we were 13, we got a poem of François Villon (medieval poet) which was naturally too difficult; when I was 15 years of age, we went to a (school-)perfomance of The Imaginary Patient (?) of Molière without reading it first, one can imagine how well that was understood. Finally, when 18, we got a serious piece of theatre: The Rhinoceros of Ionesco, but I don't think the teacher understood at all what she was talking of.

For the one German book, allowances should be made for the part of the class whose German wasn't up to scratch to read Goethe (which I read shortly after). The teacher chose a children's book about a handicapped boy (why always sad ones?), but I refused to read it and was contented with a 5/20 and made it up next test. She did address Heinrih Böll (who won the Nobel Prize that year) and Günther Grass, plus read the little poem Di Lorelei, though. And that was quite hard for most of them, so that was fine.

Still, I have sworn i my children that I don't have yet, ever come across such a teacher, the teacher is going to have a hard time with me. Admittedly, it is difficult to interest teenagers in something, but if you give them nothing but crap, they will certainly not get interested. I am sure that there is something to be read in French, that is easy enough. Fine, do not start with Hugo, but at least come with something nicer than the equivalent of a Mannilow (or how is it written?) song... There are so many great chansonniers, and then you're going to take that cheep stuff?

The lessons about Romeo and Julietwere maybe hard, but the inspired teacher made everything. It couldn't be said for French class...

I'm surprised you didn't have to read l'etranger by Camus. That book is pretty much canonical French reading in high school. The French readings I had to do were similarly atrocious though. The early grades (7-8) was all reading news papers and short fiction. We got Camus in grade 9, some sort of detective novel I barely remember and Bonheure D'Occasion in grade 10, and in grade 11 Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir and Maupassant's Une Vie. We didn't read any other of the usually canonical French authors either.

I don't know if our French was good enough for hat. In Belgium, I have dsicovered over the years (despite what they say), language class is pretty abysmal. I could not put together a sentence in French orally. Did know all the grammar and some vocab, but talking wasn't practiced enough.

But yes, at least you got what you call 'abysmal' reading in your first kind of 'fluent' years. We didn't even get that! As I said, everything I learned about French literature in general even was later, down to the 'Western Literature' class in uni.

I have discovered it now, thank God. They almost turned me off for ever.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

In the U.S. technically "instilling a love of literature and learning" is one of the supposed goals of school. Everyone I know certainly includes that in their mission statements, or other buzzwords like teaching our students to be "lifelong learners." However, it still has all the flaws you describe. They read like one novel a year, a few poems, a play maybe.

On the other hand, even when we did have assigned reading I remember just not reading any of the books or only skimming them. Why the hell would I read those boring *** books when I could be playing Final Fantasy 7 or some other pretty graphical video game? Or so I thought when I was younger. Now, of course, I'm an English major who reads all the time. Sometimes, I think it just clicks or doesn't. And sometimes, I think it can click rather late.

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Yes I totally agree with both your points here. Certainly there is a case to be made for the appreciation of literature to come at a later age, especially with all the distractions available, but surely the love of the narrative, the story is something that can engage most people - my kids are 7 and 4 and both adore books completely, and I've not brain-washed them or anything , it’s probably a combination of state school and the teenage brain.:crazy:

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Originally Posted by Jazz_

A novel a year? Really? How does it take a whole year? We studied at least a novel per term (4/year) plus plays, poems, short stories (and all were studied in-depth, especially in the later years). Maybe it's different elsewhere, but I came through a state school with a great love for literature...

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Basically as DS explains. If it is literature and language combined you do one novel in one term (1/3) a bit of poetry in another, maybe a play and then non-fiction writing or something, exam practice etc. The political focus is not about trying to introduce a range of literature, it is about ensuring students pass exams and get grades for league tables. Yes if you came through school with a love of literature then you certainly are lucky in your form of state school because I doubt you would here.

Now, in highschool, we've finally started reading things.
We no longer have compulsory library classes as we did in primary school, however in years seven and eught we'd be forced to read in class.
We still read in class now, we've started to write book reports and the schoool decides what we read.

Last year we read The Gathering by Isobelle Carmody, it is an Australian book and I suppose that means they are keeping things within the country.
I don't think it is objective though. That is the only book they've demanded be read, the library is full of mostly Australian, English and American books.

We don't have anything much from countried that do not speak English, hardly any of us can read other languages and the school hasn't taught us all too much about them, not anything extremely classic anyway.