Should We Teach the ‘Classics’?

Happy September! We are back into the school routine. It’s amazing how quickly we are into the new school year and the routines.

This semester, I am teaching the literature course - which is one of my favorites to teach because we get to read and discuss so many wonderful books. For this week, my students read Charlotte’s Web - a classic children’s book. I was interested to hear their thoughts and reactions to the book, especially after hearing from a friend that she and her daughter are reading the book and her daughter is not loving it. She is finding it “too old fashioned.” This got me thinking about the texts that we select for our students and whether or not classic texts, like Charlotte’s Web should be a part of the curriculum. Are kids still interested in reading this type of text? Will a classic text motivate kids to want to read? These are some of the questions that came to my mind.

Recently, there was an article about the use of classic texts in middle and high school classrooms. I was not surprised to read that the books used in middle and high schools has not changed much over the years - kids today are pretty much guaranteed to be reading similar texts that I read when I was in those grades. Is this a good thing or not? The responses from middle school and high school teachers as well as English professors does not point to one clear answer. Some say that they are doing a disservice to their students by not exposing them to classic texts. While others say that there are so many newer books that address similar themes that would be of more interest to students. Is one argument correct?

I think there is merit to both sides and I told my students that this is something we need to think about when selecting texts for our students to read. We want them to know about the classics, but if they barely read those books when assigned, is it a good use of instructional time?

By the end of the class, there was agreement that classic texts do need to be taught - but, they should not be the only books that we use with our students. We do need to use more current titles that our students actually want to read.

I was faced with this dilemma this summer. My daughters are not too interested in fantasy books. It’s just not their genre. But, I really felt that they should be exposed to Harry Potter - at least the first book in the series because by this point it is such a cultural text and there are many references to it in other books, movies, etc. They pushed back and did not want to read it. In that moment, I had to make a decision - I could read the book with them and they could resist by not paying much attention. In that case, they would not get much from the reading and it would not be a good use of our reading time. The other decision, and the one I landed on, is that we read something that they actually wanted to read. And, that’s what we did and they both got more out of the reading time because I went with a book that they were interested in reading.

I’m curious - where do you stand on this question? Should the classic books be taught? If so, in what capacity? Feel free to drop me an email - I’d love to hear your thoughts on this debate!