The Classics

One of my former students (who also babysat our daughters, so that tells you how long ago Ruth was in my high school classes) commented on Facebook that she finally read The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, and The Scarlet Letter--novels she had seemed to miss during her high school years. I commented in return that she must have meant "re-read" those titles because those were three of the novels that I can practically recite from memory since I taught them year after year. She did admit to remembering the story of Hester Prynne. How many of you have read those three? We did read The Scarlet Letter in ENGL 222, but I didn't include the other two because I thought most of you would have read them in high school classes.

Are high school teachers now opting to include newer titles instead of reading what we now consider the classics? Can the attention of the students not be captured with a story of a guy trying to get back his girlfriend of his youth, convincing her to have an affair with him and then being murdered by a guy set up by the lover of that guy's wife who was killed in a hit-and-run accident?

The perfect novel for a class of boys who had just returned from vocational classes was Of Mice and Men. Easy vocabulary, riveting story--and they could read the dialogue in parts and act out some of the scenes. The best test scores they ever received were on that novel--they enjoyed reading it and remembered the plot, the characters, the conflicts, the details of Lennie crushing Curley's hand and then breaking the neck of Curley's Wife.

If you haven't read any of those three, I challenge you to do so over the summer. Take the book with you to the beach. Keep it in the car with you so you can read while waiting for your child to come out of school, or in the doctor's office, or in a traffic jam, or when you have some time over lunch. Get into one of the classics. You will be glad you did.