Revamping High School Reads
I think high school literature needs a serious update. There are the “classics” we’re always required to read—Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men—and while they’re great books that have valuable themes, they’re also so stale. They’ve been assigned on a loop to kids, and their parents, and their parents' parents. Most high schoolers can’t connect with or don’t care about Jay Gatsby and Holden Caulfield: they’re all often white, very Eurocentric, and authored by men. Anyone who has read a book published in the last five to ten years knows that there’s…