Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum

[hfojvt]

109. I believe we had English all through six years of Jr. High and High School

7th-9th was Junior High and 10th-12th was high school. At least I can remember American Lit in the 8th grade and debate in the 9th grade. Then in High School there was a semester of English required every year, and then you had to take an elective English class for the other semester.

At this point my memory fails, so I checked my old report cards. Heck, I had English and Speech (which I remembered as debate) in the 9th grade. Then took reading improvment in 10th, creative writing in 11th and exposition in 12th. I think those were electives chosen out of a pool of six perhaps.

I do remember we did McBeth in English Lit in 12th grade, and I was picked to read about three parts. So I was McBeth and McDuff fighting a duel with myself.

I cannot remember a lot of required reading. A bunch of short stories maybe that were in the English textbooks, but not really novels. I guess I can remember Treasure Island and Great Expectations from Junior High, and in the 10th grade we read "Alas, Babylon". In English lit we had a long list of novels to choose from and I picked, sort of at random "Devil's Cub" which was hardly a classic. More like a 19th century harlequin it seems to me.

And West Side Story was in there somewhere as well.

Hence my obsession with the Jets.

I graduated in 1980 and read "Catcher in the Rye" when I was in my 30s and owned a bookstore. I wasn't that impressed either. I think people read it when they are teenagers and thus think it is the coolest thing ever and really profound.

Whereas for me, that book is "The Outsiders". Which I think my little brother was reading for school, but I never did.

Oh, and I think Reading Improvement required you to read three books per semester, and I read about 8 in my first semester - all by HG Wells. My teacher was not impressed, and I got a B, so I had to bear down the 2nd semester, although I cannot remember what I read for that one. I had a notebook at one time listing over 100 novels I had read, mostly science fiction I would guess, but I cannot remember most of it, except for the Asimov. I read some of his non-fiction essays as well. I remember once reading "Pebble in the Sky" and decided to write down every word I didn't understand and look it up. I did not think there would be any, since I normally read Asimov without any trouble. But there were almost ten such words. Funny, because normally I would have just jumped over them and kept reading.

I also ploughed through a bunch of my dad's old National Geographics which he kept on a shelf in order, actually several shelves.