What's the point of required reading?

Peter Doyle2 said:@nosorog, please don't try to lecture me on my own tastes (my current 🤣). I’ve come to the realization that I’m basically just revisiting where I left off as a kid :O My reading level is pretty much stuck in the teenage years—which is probably why most of my Goodreads profile is dominated by YA 🤣
Jokes aside, you made an interesting point... genres, eras, history... sure, I agree, but I have to ask: is it actually necessary to read these works cover-to-cover as required school reading? Is it really insufficient to just analyze them during class? To me, it feels like a high schooler in music class being forced to listen to and memorize an entire Bach concerto in G major (just guessing here), rather than just the most essential movement.
I'm speaking from the perspective of a teenager—or at least, a young person who is constantly "at odds with everyone." Honestly, forcing this stuff on us feels like reading "Evangelion" to five-year-olds in preschool 🤷. A large portion of these books simply wasn't written for kids that age—and we are still talking about children 🤷
And regarding the books themselves—they're supposed to be read with deep understanding. Very few people here mentioned Faust. Luckily, we didn't read it, though I've heard of it; I know there are those for whom it was mandatory, but seriously, is THAT what a high schooler needs? Isn't there a more appropriate way to "introduce" that literary era and teach the facts and significance?

@Daniel Perez6, I'm not nearly as optimistic as you. I'm actually kind of afraid that the book itself might simply—vanish—under the flood of technological advancement. Or perhaps it will become a very, very rare phenomenon—something akin to oral folklore before the invention of the printing press 😉
Maybe it's just inevitable 🤷
So how does high school required reading fit into all this? In my opinion, it doesn't encourage students to read at all; if anything, it pushes them away because of the sheer volume and content.
I'll say it again: we are talking about children (regardless of how much teenagers feel they are adults).
Which books require you to "immerse" yourself in characters who are adulterers, murderers, and so on, living in entirely different eras.

edit: And honestly, in defense of my high school teachers, I have to say they never asked us (or did so extremely, extremely rarely) questions about the color of curtains, wallpaper, or things like that. Our high school reading assignments usually boiled down to discussions during free periods. Sometimes there would be a quick review or even "tests," but generally, they were discussions. It wasn't a bad approach at all. Really. I can't blame my teachers one bit for my aversion to high school reading lists. I blame the content itself. I may have been a high school student, but I was also a teenager—dealing with wild hormones and a desire for something intimate when dealing with something deeply personal, individual, and open to interpretation, like a book.

In American English, we have grammar, literature, workbooks, and all of that (except for grammar) covers almost the exact same thing—the specific period or movement currently being studied. Why does the required reading list—which, realistically, is already becoming an alien concept to an increasing number of kids—have to be tied specifically to that curriculum?

🤣It actually lines up perfectly with what the kids I work with are reading 😬

By the way, I asked around yesterday (since I get to see into several different elementary and middle schools), and it turns out everyone gets one elective book per year based on their own interest.

As far as I know, they don't read everything in its entirety (certainly not the Bible, and most people aren't reading the Iliad or those massive epic poems either).
But hey, how are you supposed to manage something like *Anna Karenina* or *Madame Bovary*?

Peter Doyle2 said:@nosorog, please don't try to lecture me on my own tastes (my current 🤣). I’ve come to the realization that I’m basically just revisiting where I left off as a kid :O My reading level is pretty much stuck in the teenage years—which is probably why most of my Goodreads profile is dominated by YA 🤣
Jokes aside, you made an interesting point... genres, eras, history... sure, I agree, but I have to ask: is it actually necessary to read these works cover-to-cover as required school reading? Is it really insufficient to just analyze them during class? To me, it feels like a high schooler in music class being forced to listen to and memorize an entire Bach concerto in G major (just guessing here), rather than just the most essential movement.
I'm speaking from the perspective of a teenager—or at least, a young person who is constantly "at odds with everyone." Honestly, forcing this stuff on us feels like reading "Evangelion" to five-year-olds in preschool 🤷. A large portion of these books simply wasn't written for kids that age—and we are still talking about children 🤷
And regarding the books themselves—they're supposed to be read with deep understanding. Very few people here mentioned Faust. Luckily, we didn't read it, though I've heard of it; I know there are those for whom it was mandatory, but seriously, is THAT what a high schooler needs? Isn't there a more appropriate way to "introduce" that literary era and teach the facts and significance?

@Daniel Perez6, I'm not nearly as optimistic as you. I'm actually kind of afraid that the book itself might simply—vanish—under the flood of technological advancement. Or perhaps it will become a very, very rare phenomenon—something akin to oral folklore before the invention of the printing press 😉
Maybe it's just inevitable 🤷
So how does high school required reading fit into all this? In my opinion, it doesn't encourage students to read at all; if anything, it pushes them away because of the sheer volume and content.
I'll say it again: we are talking about children (regardless of how much teenagers feel they are adults).
Which books require you to "immerse" yourself in characters who are adulterers, murderers, and so on, living in entirely different eras.

edit: And honestly, in defense of my high school teachers, I have to say they never asked us (or did so extremely, extremely rarely) questions about the color of curtains, wallpaper, or things like that. Our high school reading assignments usually boiled down to discussions during free periods. Sometimes there would be a quick review or even "tests," but generally, they were discussions. It wasn't a bad approach at all. Really. I can't blame my teachers one bit for my aversion to high school reading lists. I blame the content itself. I may have been a high school student, but I was also a teenager—dealing with wild hormones and a desire for something intimate when dealing with something deeply personal, individual, and open to interpretation, like a book.

In American English, we have grammar, literature, workbooks, and all of that (except for grammar) covers almost the exact same thing—the specific period or movement currently being studied. Why does the required reading list—which, realistically, is already becoming an alien concept to an increasing number of kids—have to be tied specifically to that curriculum?

Just like they'd want to immerse themselves in vampires 😕

Aside from the mandatory assignments, I used to pick up other books by authors on the syllabus if they caught my eye (for example, after finishing *Crime and Punishment*, I dove straight into *The Idiot* and *Dmitri Karamazov*. I even took a week off sick just to finish them! 😬)
I also read various works I heard about in English or German class. Back in junior year, we had a substitute teacher for a few months—this super cool hippie girl who got us all hooked on Hermann Hesse. I almost considered studying German seriously, but I ended up spending more time with the American translations of his work rather than grinding through German grammar.
When I add it all up, I’ve definitely spent quite a few hours just lost in books.
My parents used to think I was staying up late at night because I was grinding through school reading assignments.
But honestly, back in high school, we were already rotating through Tolkien, Stephen King, Kundera, Huxley... stuff that was miles away from any standard curriculum list.
I don't know, maybe I just happened to end up in a classroom full of bookworms, but I don't remember any of us hating reading because of our required reading lists.

Peter Doyle2 said:@nosorog, please don't try to lecture me on my own tastes (my current 🤣). I’ve come to the realization that I’m basically just revisiting where I left off as a kid :O My reading level is pretty much stuck in the teenage years—which is probably why most of my Goodreads profile is dominated by YA 🤣
Jokes aside, you made an interesting point... genres, eras, history... sure, I agree, but I have to ask: is it actually necessary to read these works cover-to-cover as required school reading? Is it really insufficient to just analyze them during class? To me, it feels like a high schooler in music class being forced to listen to and memorize an entire Bach concerto in G major (just guessing here), rather than just the most essential movement.
I'm speaking from the perspective of a teenager—or at least, a young person who is constantly "at odds with everyone." Honestly, forcing this stuff on us feels like reading "Evangelion" to five-year-olds in preschool 🤷. A large portion of these books simply wasn't written for kids that age—and we are still talking about children 🤷
And regarding the books themselves—they're supposed to be read with deep understanding. Very few people here mentioned Faust. Luckily, we didn't read it, though I've heard of it; I know there are those for whom it was mandatory, but seriously, is THAT what a high schooler needs? Isn't there a more appropriate way to "introduce" that literary era and teach the facts and significance?

@Daniel Perez6, I'm not nearly as optimistic as you. I'm actually kind of afraid that the book itself might simply—vanish—under the flood of technological advancement. Or perhaps it will become a very, very rare phenomenon—something akin to oral folklore before the invention of the printing press 😉
Maybe it's just inevitable 🤷
So how does high school required reading fit into all this? In my opinion, it doesn't encourage students to read at all; if anything, it pushes them away because of the sheer volume and content.
I'll say it again: we are talking about children (regardless of how much teenagers feel they are adults).
Which books require you to "immerse" yourself in characters who are adulterers, murderers, and so on, living in entirely different eras.

edit: And honestly, in defense of my high school teachers, I have to say they never asked us (or did so extremely, extremely rarely) questions about the color of curtains, wallpaper, or things like that. Our high school reading assignments usually boiled down to discussions during free periods. Sometimes there would be a quick review or even "tests," but generally, they were discussions. It wasn't a bad approach at all. Really. I can't blame my teachers one bit for my aversion to high school reading lists. I blame the content itself. I may have been a high school student, but I was also a teenager—dealing with wild hormones and a desire for something intimate when dealing with something deeply personal, individual, and open to interpretation, like a book.

In American English, we have grammar, literature, workbooks, and all of that (except for grammar) covers almost the exact same thing—the specific period or movement currently being studied. Why does the required reading list—which, realistically, is already becoming an alien concept to an increasing number of kids—have to be tied specifically to that curriculum?

It’s because they absorb the material faster and actually retain it longer that way.
At least that worked for me (by the way, everything in our workbooks was super closely linked to the books on our required reading list).
It encourages you to form a critical opinion about the movement, the author, and the works themselves, rather than just memorizing random facts.
And like I mentioned, it's much easier to get immersed in an era and truly feel what it was like back then...
Later on, you can connect all of that to art, music, historical eras, and the political climate. I used to hate history class—it felt like a mountain of useless dates and names to memorize—but now, whenever I pick up a book, it really helps me grasp the atmosphere if I already know what was happening in that historical period or what the politics were like at the time.

Besides, if the required reading wasn't connected to the curriculum, wouldn't we basically have to learn the material AND read extra mandatory books on top of it? Wouldn't that just make the workload even heavier? 🤔

Reading really helps you build critical thinking skills and gives you a better handle on how the world works and those recurring patterns in our general culture, plus it expands your vocabulary and lets you see how different literary eras actually function through specific examples.

I’m back to saying that a huge part of this comes down to the teacher. My high school English teacher used to cherry-pick everything from the reading list except for what was specifically on the SAT prep guides, and then she’d even trim that down by deciding which books were most likely to show up on the exams—those were the ones we had to read—and which ones were less likely, so we just did deep dives on them during class. That left the actual essential works that defined certain eras, which, like I said, helped us learn the characteristics and shifts in literary history.

Personally, I didn't enjoy assigned reading either. I absolutely love reading, like, non-stop, and I’ll pick up just about anything handed to me—unless someone tells me "you have to." I didn't want to read those exact books on the syllabus because I felt like I didn't have the freedom to choose, but if you're asking if I grew to hate reading itself because of it—no way. Nobody I know ended up hating reading in general just because they were forced to read certain books. 🤷

Samuel Lee9 said:Reading really helps you build critical thinking skills and gives you a better handle on how the world works and those recurring patterns in our general culture, plus it expands your vocabulary and lets you see how different literary eras actually function through specific examples.

I’m back to saying that a huge part of this comes down to the teacher. My high school English teacher used to cherry-pick everything from the reading list except for what was specifically on the SAT prep guides, and then she’d even trim that down by deciding which books were most likely to show up on the exams—those were the ones we had to read—and which ones were less likely, so we just did deep dives on them during class. That left the actual essential works that defined certain eras, which, like I said, helped us learn the characteristics and shifts in literary history.

Personally, I didn't enjoy assigned reading either. I absolutely love reading, like, non-stop, and I’ll pick up just about anything handed to me—unless someone tells me "you have to." I didn't want to read those exact books on the syllabus because I felt like I didn't have the freedom to choose, but if you're asking if I grew to hate reading itself because of it—no way. Nobody I know ended up hating reading in general just because they were forced to read certain books. 🤷

Any decent English teacher can take a mandatory reading list and expand it by finding "substitute" works with similar themes or styles that might be more relatable or enjoyable. It basically gets rid of that annoying "you MUST!!!" vibe.
When you offer a variety of titles, there's a much better chance people will actually pick something up, or at least give it a shot.
The alternative is just checking boxes: "Here's a list, go write an essay." That's the easiest route, but it's the least engaging path for both the teacher and the student.

Greetings! I am currently undergoing some career retraining through my school, and I’ve just been handed a list of thirteen required readings for my fourth year.

I was hoping you all might shed some light on the book titled Transformation; it is actually quite unique because it essentially functions as two novels bound together—the first part being Process and the second being transformation.

If my assignment specifically lists "Franz Kafka: Transformation" as the required reading, would I really need to dive into Process as well? Will my instructors be looking for knowledge from that section, or is the work generally treated as one single cohesive book? 😕

Kate Williams said:Greetings! I am currently undergoing some career retraining through my school, and I’ve just been handed a list of thirteen required readings for my fourth year.

I was hoping you all might shed some light on the book titled Transformation; it is actually quite unique because it essentially functions as two novels bound together—the first part being Process and the second being transformation.

If my assignment specifically lists "Franz Kafka: Transformation" as the required reading, would I really need to dive into Process as well? Will my instructors be looking for knowledge from that section, or is the work generally treated as one single cohesive book? 😕

Look, those are two totally different works. If the assignment calls for Transformation, then just stick to Transformation.

Why isn't there a single comic book on the required reading list? Do you guys think it would be a good idea for kids to get introduced to at least one graphic novel while they're in school? And if so, which one do you think actually deserves a spot?

Chris Grant3 said:Why isn't there a single comic book on the required reading list? Do you guys think it would be a good idea for kids to get introduced to at least one graphic novel while they're in school? And if so, which one do you think actually deserves a spot?

What do you mean there aren't any?
The librarian I was talking to mentioned that Doris is actually on the second-grade reading list.

Sandman. 😁

They've got comics, sure, but comic book techniques actually show up in all sorts of other teaching methods too, so they aren't really missing out on anything.

Check this out—this kid actually had an assignment to put together his own comic strip for second grade.

Which comics are available (besides Doris's)?

kuki 😁

Wasn't the whole point of that big push to be including more graphic novels and comic books in the required reading lists? Maybe I just got carried away and started taking it for granted.

I know Greg reads them too, and my colleague even assigned Persepolis to her high school students.

I am honestly so frustrated with this book report assignment.

When she was little, I’d sit and read right along with her. But once she hit third grade, I started pushing her to tackle everything on her own—reading the books solo, answering questions by herself, and doing her own writing. I’d step in if she was getting completely off track, but even then, I wouldn't just tell her what to write. I’d just ask enough questions until she figured out the right answer herself.

She wasn't some star student back then; she mostly just pulled Bs. Honestly, the book reports those other moms were putting together for their kids were just way better executed.
And she hated it. She hated reading and she hated writing, and just mentioning a book report would make her totally shut down.

Now she’s in eighth grade, and she actually reads quite a bit. Since fifth grade, she’s been pulling As on these assignments. I won't let her get away with reading those abridged versions. She tried to argue that it isn't fair, pointing out how everyone else gets to read the shortened versions, and claiming it was unfair in earlier grades when I wouldn't write her reports for her, making her feel like she couldn't keep up with the other kids.
But I’m holding my ground. I won't let her take the easy way out. I want her to actually read. I truly believe reading is an asset; it builds vocabulary, teaches you something new from every story, and ultimately makes you a more well-rounded person.

The teacher actually gave them the abridged versions though...

Scott Miller4 said:I am honestly so frustrated with this book report assignment.

When she was little, I’d sit and read right along with her. But once she hit third grade, I started pushing her to tackle everything on her own—reading the books solo, answering questions by herself, and doing her own writing. I’d step in if she was getting completely off track, but even then, I wouldn't just tell her what to write. I’d just ask enough questions until she figured out the right answer herself.

She wasn't some star student back then; she mostly just pulled Bs. Honestly, the book reports those other moms were putting together for their kids were just way better executed.
And she hated it. She hated reading and she hated writing, and just mentioning a book report would make her totally shut down.

Now she’s in eighth grade, and she actually reads quite a bit. Since fifth grade, she’s been pulling As on these assignments. I won't let her get away with reading those abridged versions. She tried to argue that it isn't fair, pointing out how everyone else gets to read the shortened versions, and claiming it was unfair in earlier grades when I wouldn't write her reports for her, making her feel like she couldn't keep up with the other kids.
But I’m holding my ground. I won't let her take the easy way out. I want her to actually read. I truly believe reading is an asset; it builds vocabulary, teaches you something new from every story, and ultimately makes you a more well-rounded person.

The teacher actually gave them the abridged versions though...

Come on, man, explain.
What do you mean by "shortened versions"?
What kind of books are they even reading like that?

Honestly, looking at everything I can find online, that Pinocchio picture book is just bottom-of-the-barrel garbage.

swiftranger16 said:Come on, man, explain.
What do you mean by "shortened versions"?
What kind of books are they even reading like that?

Take Alkar, for example. It's basically just a condensed version of the book, nicely summarized.
People read those instead, and then they base all their notes on that.

Scott Miller4 said:Take Alkar, for example. It's basically just a condensed version of the book, nicely summarized.
People read those instead, and then they base all their notes on that.

Condensed versions are used during class because there isn't enough time to finish an entire book in a 45-minute period, but for a teacher to actually claim they're reading abridged versions as their primary literature is just stupid.

Who exactly is responsible for churning out these condensed versions? Does someone actually need permission from the author, the publisher, or—heaven forbid—who else would they need to clear it with before they start hacking away at someone's literary work? 🤔

Kyle Rogers9 said:Condensed versions are used during class because there isn't enough time to finish an entire book in a 45-minute period, but for a teacher to actually claim they're reading abridged versions as their primary literature is just stupid.

I don't think so. In class, they usually just go over specific, representative excerpts rather than reading a watered-down version of the whole thing.

I recently came across the Penguin Classics series. They basically offer condensed versions of the classics that run about a hundred pages or so. So far, they've released three titles: Don Quixote, Crime and Punishment, and Madame Bovary. I know some purists and literary snobs might argue that high schoolers shouldn't be reading summaries instead of the full texts, but honestly, I think it's a great idea. I mean, it's better to read something than nothing at all, right? Plus, these retellings do a decent job of mimicking the original style, so you almost feel like you've actually tackled the source material. I guess these could be a huge help with school reading lists since you can get through these massive literary staples in maybe two hours rather than spending several days on them. 👍

Writing a book report for school takes way more than just a quick summary where some third party decides what actually matters from the story.
Plus, I really don't think it’s a great idea to tell kids, "Hey, here's a shortcut, just wing it because anything is better than nothing."