When I was teaching AP Literature, we would read around seven books in one year. All of these books were classics, and not always full of cheer. Sometimes my students would question, why are we reading books that are such downers? Not all the books I taught in my other classes were classics, but they were popular, and they all held universal themes that many could relate to. 

Scott R. Sanders, a professor and award-winning author, raises this question: “Should we protect our students by avoiding issues that might cause them to despair? That's a question I've wrestled with since I began teaching, more than a quarter of a century ago. Early on, I answered it with a simple No. We shouldn't avoid the real social and ecological and philosophical problems, no matter how disturbing they may be...I asked my students to think about slavery, poverty, inequality, the fate of indigenous cultures, the nuclear arms race, the Holocaust, the human assault on nature” (B4). 

He suggests we provide discussion and solutions. “Knowledge, by contrast, offers us frameworks for making sense of the fragments, ways of gathering them into wholes. Information arouses our feelings; knowledge helps us imagine how we might act” (B4).

Reading about desperate situations, cultures other than our own, or experiences that one has not experienced can help provide empathy and knowledge. If someone has experienced something similar, then perhaps it can help with closure or healing. 

I receive emails about educational books that are coming out, and this one stood out to me: Literature and The New Culture Wars: Triggers, Cancel Culture, and the Teacher's Dilemma by Deborah Appleman. 

Appleman’s thesis centers around how today's politics have “reshaped” high school instruction. From language to subject matter, triggering content, and canceled authors, school reading lists are “rapidly shrinking.” 

Choosing books for a curriculum is becoming a struggle and Appleman challenges educators for a “reacknowledgment of the intellectual and affective work that literature can do, and offers ways to continue to teach troubling texts without doing harm. Rather than banishing challenged texts from our classrooms, we should be confronting and teaching the controversies they invoke.”

I am looking forward to reading this book this summer. The classics and the other books I taught are near and dear to my heart. I learned so much from reading and rereading these books and enjoyed the discussions I had with my students. I don't see a shift too soon, but hope that books, like Appleman's and essays, such as Sanders, can help educate our world. 

The books I remember when I was in high school were The Scarlet Letter and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the teacher made the difference, too. What classic books do you remember reading in high school?


Sources:
Scott Russell Sanders is the award-winning author of A Private History of Awe, Hunting for Hope, A Conservationist Manifesto, Dancing in Dreamtime, and two dozen other books of fiction, personal narrative, and essays.

Sanders, S. R. (1999, April 9). Teaching Thoughtful Students the Rudiments  of Hope. Chronicle of Higher Education, 45(31), B4.