A Modern Reading List for High School?

[Poker Clif]

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No prob, we have 'years' here which start at 'year 1' for 4/5 years old etc, so my 11 year old is just about to start 'year 7'.

On Writing - a bit dry for this age really. Good for the aspiring writers though. I think King can be a good writer for this age though, if you pick the story wisely. I was wondering about 'The Green Mile', actually...


Hobbit is about 200 pages, and apart from the opening 35 pages which is a tea party essentially, is pretty action packed, funny, entertaining. The section where Gollum and Bilbo have a riddle competition is a classic.

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Steven King has been mentioned more than once. I have a slightly different proposal.

To show that good writing is good writing. First, pick a "typical" short story of his that is a little scary or whatever. Next (and suddenly I can't come up with the title), the story of his son's run at the Little League World Series.

I heard this as a book on tape, and I was rooting for his son, as riveted as I have ever been by a short story. Amazing, absolutely great writing! Definitely something that kids not much older than the protaganist can relate to.

[AceLuby]

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Perhaps, but some readers are better than others. A film like The Graduate can be "read" in a number of different ways. I'm certainly not about to discount a feminist reading of the film that investigates the nature of middle-aged female sexuality, or a Marxist reading of the film, or even a historical reading of the film that locates it within a tradition of romantic comedies that begins with Harold Lloyd.

If I'm to listen to someone who wishes to discount Shakespeare, then that reader better know what the hell he or she is talking about. Once someone tells me that Shakespeare stinks because the language is "Old English" or he's too hard to read, I'm not going to take him or her seriously. Why should I? Of course Shakespeare is hard to read, and critics have debated various problems in Shakespeare for centuries. But Shakespeare also adapts to our time. See the film versions of his plays. See his plays performed. Read Jan Kott's Shakespeare, Our Contemporary.

I can't do math. Would anyone take me seriously if I said that trig is too hard to understand and holds no relevance for today's students? If I were to make that claim, someone would want to lock me up. I'm not much good at physics, either. Hell, let's throw that one on the scrap pile, too.

It's okay to f*ck with Shakespeare, though.

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First off this is HS english. I think catering to the 5 or so students that will enjoy reading it is bad if the other 25 are bored to tears and can't understand it. Unless it's an AP type class I feel you are turning more people away from reading than enlightening them.

Also, I feel that 90% of HS english teachers CAN'T teach it. This goes along w/ my other point that only those few kids who actually enjoy deciphering it actually take anything away from reading it. Otherwise the other kids read the cliff notes and regurgitate whatever it tells them that section/chapter/book is about.

Comparing one writer to math, trig, or physics is dumb. You drove today didn't you? How about take a hot shower? Well there's your math/trig/physics relevence. Average HS kids aren't going to 'get' any type of relevence Shakespeare has on today's world.

I guess I feel that WS should be taught to AP level seniors and 'most' stories are over the heads of readers not in that group. I know that as a 9th grader R&J was over my head (due to deciphering the english) and that Macbeth was difficult as a 11th grader and Hamlet was near impossible w/out cliff notes. Granted I'm not very good at English, but I'm not dumb either. I still managed A's.

[diddyeinstein]

Please don't assign 'The Lottery', it gives me nightmares.

[SoloAJ]

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Please don't assign 'The Lottery', it gives me nightmares.

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I like The Lottery [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Kimbell175113]

I had never heard of The Lottery until these posts, just looked it up and read it. Yikes. I would have loved that when I was in high school.

[Quadstriker]

Do not make the students read Shakespeare. Take them instead to a performance of a local Shakespeare company after a couple of classes discussing Shakespeare. (Introduction to the context of the time period, samples of his writing in class disciphered with help of the instructor, etc.) The students will get 10 times more out of it. Why is it so many so called "experts" seem to gloss over the fact that these literary works were created to be seen and heard, not read on a page?

[bryan4967]

lol @ DC 10th graders reading "C&P".

[John Cole]

So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forcéd cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads.

A few lines from Hamlet, underlined by Harry Truman the night before he decided to drop the A bomb. I guess someone found it relevant. And I would venture that he knew more about Shakespeare than the inner workings of the A bomb.

By the way, how many students who took trig or physics designed my heating system or internal combustion engine. I will concede that it useful for some to know Bernoulli's Equation, but I maintain that it is just as necessary for people to be exposed to great works of literature. And if they are hard, they're hard. Reading hard books teaches students how to read hard books. "Bored to tears" often equals "can't undertand," but the latter term really comes before the former. Hell, I was "bored to tears" in math class because I couldn't understand it. But I'm not foolish enough to believe that math instruction should stop at addition and subtraction, which is what you seem to want to do with literature.

And, teach students the dirty bits in Shakespeare, and they'll actively try to decipher the text. What do you think Hamlet meant by "country matters"?

[Manque]

Did anyone mention Night?

[suppasonic]

I cant think of any good reason a HS English teacher has for not teaching WS.