To the Editor:
In the Jan. 16 opinion essay “Stop Assigning Boring Books in English Class,” Superintendent Erich May declares that high schools ought to “stop assigning the wrong books” so that teens will enjoy reading again. Which books are “wrong”? According to May, anything 19th century or older.
Like May, I’m a former high school English teacher and I couldn’t agree more that students should read authors from the past 100 years like George Orwell and Toni Morrison.
But I’m floored by his suggestion that anything published over a century ago is simply too old to teach. If, as he says, Wuthering Heights is outdated, “ugly,” and “boring,” why did we just get an R-rated movie inspired by the novel and starring Margot Robbie?
Not so very long ago, I taught “Othello” the same way my department had been doing for years. And guess what? Teenagers happen to love stories about lying, cheating, and revenge. They also have a lot to say about racism and interracial relationships. (Incidentally, they also like reenactments involving very fake weapons.) Students don’t have to understand every word to learn that, four centuries ago, human beings faced struggles much like our own.
And that’s not to mention the value of reading books, old or new, that convey experiences different from what kids have encountered. (See Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, another 19th-century text that my 11th graders didn’t find boring.)
Writing off entire centuries of literature doesn’t make reading more relevant. It only closes doors for students.
Meredith Coffey
Senior Policy & Operations Associate
Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Washington, D.C.
