Required Reading

[Werefrog]

After reading Alunissage's surprise at never reading The Sound and the Fury in high school and an article about a group donating money to have Atlas Shrugged made required reading in universities across the country, I began to wonder about what it means for something to be required reading.

Certainly, the ideas that are presented in required reading assignments are lifted up above the other ideas in a society. But how big is the influence of the material that we read in high school (and college)? I've honestly seen (well, in the digital sense of the word) some libertarians arguing that there is a socialist conspiracy to brainwash into having a bias against libertarian ideas. On the other hand, I reject the hypodermic needle model of communication for the belief that we have the ability to filter out information that contradict my values. Certainly at this age, I would reject the values presented in Ayn Rand's novel, but would it be different if I were still in high school (or middle school)?

I'll open the question up to the board: how do you feel that reading assignments shaped your world view?

Also: how do we as a society decide which books should become required reading? Should it be based solely on aesthetic value? Or should morals play into it as well? What about ethnicity? Nearly every author that I read in high school was a white man. Shouldn't our reading lists reflect our diversity?

My take is that schools should take on a historical perspective and should include different literature that was being written at approximately in the same period.

Finally, what books do you feel should be required reading?

(Sorry if this makes little sense: It's kinda late)

[Sonic#]

In middle school, I can't say so much for the conventional reading curriculum, as the gifted class I was taking substituted for the regular reading class. So we would do alternating units on a topic and on a work of literature, like discussing castles before reading Macbeth, or reading The Westing Game and then playing a stock market game.

As far as how required reading shaped my worldview, first it definitely broadened my choices about what to read. I started out reading a bunch of Star Wars books and some other novels. Accelerated Reading requirements, which I resisted at the time, required me to read books by Agatha Christie and other people. Mysteries, fantasy, all of these started becoming accessible to me. Accompanied by a curriculum that in middle school encouraged a wide variety of reading, and in high school would be a mixture of great plays, novels, and poems. In one year, I read both Cold Sassy Tree and Cyrano de Bergerac. I loved both. And so, by the time I made it to college, I would read all kinds of things. Science fiction, okay! Fantasy, okay! Mysteries, okay! Non-fiction? Yay! Classics? Mmmm. I would even read part of the Canterbury Tales, part of Les Miserables, and all of Don Quixote on my own. And yes, I read Anthem, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and the Romantic Manifesto, all by Ayn Rand, and liked them. (I still like them, if I have issue with the way Rand would apply her ideas.)

It's difficult to say how precisely they formed an impression on me. I've always thought that a broadly read person has a source of experience that isn't easily reproducible. They possess a wider vocabulary and can thus can express themselves better and think more clearly. They can have a more nuanced view on many points of history, from seeing how Nazism might affect a family in Number the Stars to seeing how both the hopes and the anxieties of the Anglo-Saxons are shown through Beowulf. The medieval period becomes more than a simple "backward time," or as my friend says, "that time the kings would get in horsecarts and ride through their muddy dung-ridden streets." The Renaissance is not simply one time period in Italy, but a movement across all Europe, with concerns about humanism and theology alongside worries about marriage laws. And so on and so forth to the present day, where we can see (if imperfectly) the histories that other people carry with them, the poverty of some, the riches of others, the youth of some, the age of others, the cultures of some, and the cultures of others. I hope that has been imprinted on me.

I'm not sure what the criteria for choosing books should be. To state that it is aesthetic value is to beg the question, "What aesthetic? Whose?" The same with the moral. The most that can be done is, through study searching for broadly identifiable aesthetics, broadly recognized morals, and historical significance, to develop a core canon of works that can be chosen. The first would provide for clear enough language and forms that a teacher can talk about different forms of analogy, different forms of grammar, different forms of poetry, and all of that. The second would probably be the weakest consideration; an adequate teacher should be able to discuss any accepted work in such a way that reflections on morals and ethics come out of the discussion, so that it matters whether Claudius kills his brother, whether Ophelia commits suicide, and whether Hamlet kills Laertes, but it doesn't matter as far as selecting a reading. That is, the student should be taught (and should learn) to think about the actions of the characters, not treated as a sponge to absorb only immaculate examples of people. And as for the historical significance, that would be recognizing tradition, going from Beowulf, through the Canterbury Tales, up through Shakespeare, down through Milton, across through Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, then William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and all of those folks, and the rest, if for no better reason than because those are the works most often alluded to by others.

At the same time, one should create a sort of anti-canon. Once the canon is made, the biases of the canon should be spotted and corrected. This would encourage the injection of alternate historical perspectives, women writers, colonial and postcolonial writers, minority writers, and even limited amounts of literary criticism. Sometimes they can be in excerpt, particularly at the high school level, but they would help to demonstrate what we would too easily forget otherwise, that there were many authors working at the same time as Shakespeare, and before, and we shouldn't let the brightest star be the only one in the sky.

I did like the way my high school structured the reading. In the ninth grade, it was world literature, just getting the basics in. In the tenth grade, the same thing happened, building up a literary vocabulary. In the eleventh grade, we read American literature to accompany our US History course, and in the twelfth grade, we read British literature. The latter two were historical approaches, that is, going to a literary period, talking about it, reading some authors, talking about them on their own and in relation to the period, and getting some literary terminology in as well. There was room for innovation, but it wasn't too bad.

And as for college, I could go on at length about how literature courses are run, but thankfully those are mostly in the hands of the competent professors that run them, and so their reading selections are well-selected.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

What about ethnicity? Nearly every author that I read in high school was a white man. Shouldn't our reading lists reflect our diversity?

I understand that due to society and the cataloging minds people have makes this hard, but i think people really have to stop viewing diversity with skin color or any other physically "differentiating" trait.

We are diverse in the differences in our views and opinions and the things we offer. Those are all things that play a big role in books. Color really shouldn't.

[Werefrog]

Well, I did say ethnicity and not race which is not particularly differentiated by physical appearance, rather a shared cultural inheritance. However, this often overlaps with race since skin color is the easiest way to differentiate one group from another.

I have to say that I disagree with you though, B_G. Due to a different cultural background, members of different races have a different interpretation of the world-- which reflects in literature. We should value these differences rather than claiming that they don't exist.

And yes, I read Anthem, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and the Romantic Manifesto, all by Ayn Rand, and liked them. (I still like them, if I have issue with the way Rand would apply her ideas.)

I'm afraid that at this point in my life I would be unable to separate my views on her politics from her literature. Maybe, this wouldn't be so hard for me if her novels weren't completely about her politics. I realize that this is a personal failure on my part, but I have a feeling that I couldn't stomach 1000 pages of why pure capitalism is the only acceptable economics system.

However, I think what bothers me the most is that they're paying schools to make the book required. There seems to be something horribly wrong about the figurative "marketplace of ideas" becoming a literal one.

Back to the idea of aesthetic value, perhaps the best way to approach this through literary movements by picking books that exhibit the aesthetic sensibilities of the day. However, this approach risks becoming centered too much on Western literature.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

Well, I did say ethnicity and not race which is not particularly differentiated by physical appearance, rather a shared cultural inheritance. However, this often overlaps with race since skin color is the easiest way to differentiate one group from another.

I have to say that I disagree with you though, B_G. Due to a different cultural background, members of different races have a different interpretation of the world-- which reflects in literature. We should value these differences rather than claiming that they don't exist.

They do exist, but it just seems racist for a school to be sitting there like "Okay we have a book written by a black person. We have a book written by a latin person..umm..What's a good book written by an asian person?". Imagine if somehow the situation came to where the author inquired about why he/she was chosen to be on the required reading list.

I just think the other aspects need to be the most prominent and considered. I'm sure your reading list in school was quite diverse.

[Sonic#]

Back to the idea of aesthetic value, perhaps the best way to approach this through literary movements by picking books that exhibit the aesthetic sensibilities of the day. However, this approach risks becoming centered too much on Western literature.

Which is why you would have the other criteria to offset the focus on Western literature. Either that, or for college level courses (where the level of intensity really allows for doing more), study different aesthetics in different times... and in different places. It would have to be in translation, but that would be a good opportunity to learn about what might be lost in the translation. But that would be for more advanced study; for high school, the most that can be done is a limited branching out.

I'm afraid that at this point in my life I would be unable to separate my views on her politics from her literature. Maybe, this wouldn't be so hard for me if her novels weren't completely about her politics. I realize that this is a personal failure on my part, but I have a feeling that I couldn't stomach 1000 pages of why pure capitalism is the only acceptable economics system.

I can't quite explain why I like her fiction. Some of her heroes are good, some of her villains are decent, but it's because she sets them in such a stark dichotomy that it becomes problematic. I like the way she uses language. She is a good describer. It is just, well, the first 800 pages of both of her huge books are fiction. Yes, they carry a particular view in them, a vision, but it at least contains the illusion that the reader can derive what they will from it; it's moralistic, but not full of itself. It's when the main character goes on an 80 page ramble about the values exemplified throughout the story that she really loses me. Which is why, if you haven't read her, I would only recommend Anthem. It's shorter, and was written before she became staunch about capitalism.

I suppose I would like her better if she would have kept to fiction. Or at least wrote some fiction, instead of shifting to promote her philosophy. I could say more about that, but I don't want to hijack the topic.

They do exist, but it just seems racist for a school to be sitting there like "Okay we have a book written by a black person. We have a book written by a latin person..umm..What's a good book written by an asian person?". Imagine if somehow the situation came to where the author inquired about why he/she was chosen to be on the required reading list.

That would be a problem if the only reason their writing was considered is because it was of a certain race or ethnicity. But to even be looked at, it has to have other qualities that make it good. Their works should not be sought out because they complete the clique of diversity, but because the people that form the reading collection view them as worthwhile first, and by their viewpoint know to look at more than what was historically accepted, to look at all people. That concern may carry an ethnic tinge, but if the question is phrased, "I wonder if X viewed Y any differently due to what I know about Z?" then I can see little reason for it to offend. To reach out to other cultures in such a positive way, with the goal being understanding, is no sin. It is only when we seek to confirm our biases that it becomes problematic, but care can be taken to avoid it, if we're conscious of it.