I mean, I can see what she's getting at, but I don't think it's a terribly compelling argument. For one thing, there does in fact exist a genre of novels that are exactly about all the hopes, fears, feelings, and experiences of teenagers, so it's odd to me that she doesn't even mention YA books once. I do think teaching good nonfiction should be a part of most high school English classes, but there are kids who would get bored with a steady diet of Capote and Didion, too. Instead of abandoning novels for nonfiction entirely, I'd argue for including different kinds of writing on high school reading lists: classic literature, contemporary literature, YA novels, and nonfiction too.

That's just weak songwriting. You wrote a bad song, Petey!

Emmett and I quote this all the time. Frequently while pointing an accusing finger at the radio.

I think I hate that argument, because I was a Lit major. In fact, I wanted historical fiction to be taught in Social Studies so it was more interest. However, I didn't get that Jake was impotent the first time I read The Sun Also Rises either. And I didn't get that Buck was a dog in The Call of The Wild. And I didn't get that the woman in The Awakening killed herself. Oddly, I still enjoyed the books!

I have memories of a chalkboard stick figure with a "no" symbol over the private parts before we started reading Sun Also Rises, so there was no chance of misinterpretation.

I think there's an argument to be made that a number of novels resonate more clearly when you have more life experience to hold them up against. I got way more out of Fitzgerald in my 30s than in my teens. On the other hand, the Brontes and Austen worked for me as a teenager, possibly because I had no trouble relating to navigating complex social structures, fear of poverty, and falling for the entirely wrong people.

And I'm not sure non-fiction would have done the same thing for me, because I don't think it's written to the same purpose. I think it would be a good addition to a reading curriculum, but not as a replacement for fiction.

There's probably a very strong argument to be made for revisiting the high school literature canon to better suit modern teens and teaching methods. But no argument based on "I really didn't like learning XYZ, therefore teaching it is Bad For America" is ever going to hold much water.

I have memories of a chalkboard stick figure with a "no" symbol over the private parts before we started reading Sun Also Rises, so there was no chance of misinterpretation.

That's hilarious.

I'm already on record with how disgruntled I am with the way literature has been taught at Emmett's school. Literally every novel he's read has been one about the oppressive forces of social injustice and economic determinism. They are all depressing novels, social realist, and selected for their social mores rather than literary merit.

Obviously I'm fine with the lefty social perspective but it's really turned reading in a total fucking drag for Emmett.

I think the English teachers just presume that everybody is miserable in high school and need literature that validates that. But Emmett is not by nature miserable.

I liked to read, and the general selection of books we read in high school was not great (Red Pony, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, The Old Man and the Sea, The Heart of Darkness). Also, we read very few books, now that I think about it-- it seems like they read a lot more. We read 1 per year, and in 10th and 11th grade we had an outside reading from a choice of 3 books (I read Black Like Me and To Kill a Mockingbird). We just had endless short stories and poems from the Houghton Mifflin Readers.

I came away from my high school English classes with an aversion to classic literature, although that was more due to the way they were taught than the content. (However, I will never read Thomas Hardy again.) The teachers had a tendency to dissect the books down to the symbols/themes, which took a lot of potential enjoyment out of reading.

This is reminding me, too, of the parent I spoke to in my library a month or two ago. She was looking for recommendations for her daughter, who she said wasn't much of a reader. She said the girl mostly liked to reread books over and over: Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, etc. I was happy to give her some new books/series to try, but I also suggested (gently) that it was actually OK if the kid just wants to reread her favorite books over and over, especially if the end goal is to have a kid who likes to read. (What I didn't say was, "I'm pretty sure telling a kid she shouldn't be reading the books she loves is a great way to turn her off reading for pleasure.")