By Julia Burke and Ally Slocum
Answer this question honestly: Did you enjoy reading Great Expectations in the ninth grade? Did you read the whole thing? If your answer to these questions are no, you are not alone.
Westborough High School requires students to read, analyze, and discuss a number of novels in order to pass English courses. Teachers are allowed to create their curriculum from a list of books. As great as it is that the requirements have some flexibility, the options are not exactly ideal. Many of the books are unappealing to a teenage audience, difficult to understand, and frankly, boring.
The books included in the reading curriculum should be updated. Reading helps students in developing an in-depth understanding of concepts and ideas, improve vocabulary, and provide a sense of entertainment. Although the novels studied in class have important messages and themes, these ideas are challenging to fully grasp due to the novel’s difficult wording. Most students find the books to be long, uninteresting, and rigorous, and thus many don’t even complete the assigned reading. Reading should be an enjoyable experience in a high school student’s life, yet the books required can make doing so dreadful. Without reading the material, how is a student supposed to learn anything?
High School English teachers are given a list of books they get to choose to teach in their curriculum. Some of these books include The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Fahrenheit 451, and Frankenstein, which are outdated and difficult to read due to their content. Some may say that although they may be boring, these books are necessary in order to teach a theme. However similarly, if not exact, themes can be found in more modern and engaging books. For example, The Red Badge Of Courage by Stephen Crane was published in 1895 and has a theme of defining, desiring, and achieving courage in oneself. I can think of several popular, modern books with the same theme, one example is Divergent by Veronica Roth, published in 2011. A book with a similar theme would allow for lessons and essays to be the same while making the book actually enjoyable to read.
Updating the novels read in English classes to more modern stories would highly benefit the school as a whole. By making the novels easier to understand, students will be able to get more out of the thematic ideas. Interesting and entertaining storylines will keep students focused and on task, allowing them to retain information better. Interesting stories will also motivate students to read on their own time and help to expose them to new genres and authors that they may enjoy. Modernizing the reading will also make the stories more relatable and generate more intriguing class discussions.
We understand the value of reading classic literature. Some stories are interesting and important, such as A Separate Peace and The Secret Life of Bees . However, it is possible to have a mixture of both modern and dated literature that maintains a balance to please both students and teachers. After all, reading is a great source of entertainment and is also a crucial learning tool, so we might as well make it enjoyable for the benefit of students.
Abby • Jan 22, 2015 at 5:29 pm
I like how you said that we can read more modern books with the same themes as older ones. This is a very interesting point that I haven’t thought of before. Overall I half agree because I think we can learn these same topics or themes through more current books, but I also think that reading the books we have assigned is to teach us to open up to the idea of reading different styles of writing in these books–even if the books themselves are not very interesting.
Marisa Papagelis • Jan 22, 2015 at 1:03 pm
I completely agree with everything that was said in this article. As a freshman, I agree that the books are definitely boring and outdated. In the whole first half of the year, my English class has sped through six old books, most of which were boring, confusing, and irrelevant. I can honestly say out of the six books, I didn’t completely read any of them because none of the stories really made me want to finish reading.
Kate Katz • Jan 22, 2015 at 12:51 pm
Although I agree with you in the fact lots of the books we are assigned are boring and difficult to read, that is another part of the curriculum. Teaching students to understand the older English language, and including many difficult vocabulary is part of the reason we are made to read these outdated books. Although it may seem to be just for the theme, there are other reasons behind reading Great Expectations, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, ect.