Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum

[XemaSab]

32. I'm of a few minds on this

Kids should read the classics, but the way they're "taught" is awful.

I still remember an assignment from freshman English in high school where I had to write a paragraph about every single character in "Great Expectations," even the characters who only have one scene in the entire book. I also recall discussions about, say, chapter 5 of "1984," where you couldn't talk about what happens in chapters 6 onward when analyzing the chapter because most of the students hadn't read past chapter 5.

A good part of my brain thinks that if you're going to try to do hardcore literary analysis, you may as well assign something like "Teh Lion, teh Witch, and teh Wardrobe," have the kids read the whole thing over the weekend, and then spend a week or two picking the corpse clean. There's enough there to look at that the class will be kept busy, but it's easy enough and the metaphors are ham-handed enough that even the slower learners will be able to participate in the discussion. Then after the class has finished that, then use what you've learned to go on to something harder, like Steinbeck.