Lessons Learned from a Debate About the Reading List for an English Class

It all started when my son's English teacher—an extraordinary mentor and all-around wonderful guy named Curt—sent email asking parents and students for their feedback on a list of books he was considering for the upcoming year. Unlike a requisite high school English class, this group was composed of seven homeschooled teens ranging in age from 15 to 18 who had been studying together for the past two years. They were accustomed to working collaboratively with their teacher and each other. Without the carrot-and-stick incentive of grades to motivate them, they had reason to make sure the books would be ones they'd feel inspired to read. So, when Curt asked for feedback, it was a genuine request for responses. 

Here's the list he proposed:

• The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Now, before you say what most people say ("Oh, those books are wonderful!"), let me stop you. I am aware that these are all distinguished works by well-respected authors. The Shipping News won a Pulitzer, and The Poisonwood Bible (a finalist for the Pulitzer) happens to be a personal favorite of mine. As models for writing fiction, they all have something to offer, from character portrayals to magical realism.


However, as I looked at the list, I could not imagine my son, a fairly typical teenage boy, enjoying a single one of the selections. His taste in literature runs more toward Terry Pratchett, Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Gaiman, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. So, although I should have known better, I decided to be his advocate. 

I wrote lengthy emails explaining why I thought he would dislike the books. Of course, I conceded, there's no harm in reading a few books you don't like, but was it reasonable to ask him to slog through over 400 pages of Allende's prose? I suggested other books he might like better. I asked whether it might be possible to read brief excerpts, a few chapters, to get a sense of the style. Curt waited patiently to see how others (particularly the students) would respond.

A few people chimed in, but mostly it was me having a dialog with one of the other parents, who happened to agree with me. All the while, a nagging voice in the back of my head wanted to know: "Why are you doing this?" Rationally, I knew I should leave it up to my son to express his own preferences. But, since he was unwilling to get involved in the discussion, preferring instead to defer to the teacher's choices (as described in an earlier post), I felt compelled to act on his behalf. Admittedly, not one of my best decisions, but once I got started and was already out on a limb, it became harder and harder for me to let go. I felt I had to persuade others that my point was valid, had to get them to agree that what constitutes "good" literature is largely subjective. Who says Death Comes for the Archbishop is superior to American Gods, anyway?

"What makes a book good?"is not an easy question to answer. Given the diversity of celebrated literature, I've always believed it was possible to be well educated and well read without being tied to a specific list of books, but not everyone agrees with me. Among home educators, there's a range of opinions regarding which books children ought to be required to read. Some are determined to have their children read the "classics"(as recommended by The Well-Trained Mind); others seek books that are the most likely to inspire a love of reading. A few base their entire homeschooling programs on "Great Books" (via Great Books Academy or a similar provider). Me? I brought my kids to the library often and encouraged them to choose for themselves. 

Perhaps that's why I felt a sense of vindication when I came across the The Skeptic's Guide to the Great Books (one of The Great Courses lecture series) by Professor Grant L. Voth, which argues that:

". . . you can get the same pleasures, satisfactions, and insights from books that have yet to be considered 'great.' Books that are shorter, more accessible, and less dependent on classical references and difficult language."

I realized my zealous quest to influence Curt's choices was partly motivated by my desire to promote wider acceptance of "more accessible" books. But why did I care so much?

As I was mulling things over, I decided to listen to the latest TED Radio Hour program, Making Mistakes. In part 4 of the program ("Is Conflict Good for Progress?"), Margaret Heffernan asserts that we "bring children up to imagine that there is a right answer, and that intelligence is about knowing that right answer, and therefore if you get a wrong answer, you're stupid. So . . . we teach people to have a great talent for second-guessing what everybody wants the answer to be."

When I heard this, I was reminded of how good I became as a student at second guessing what my English teacher wanted me to say, how I conformed to her expectations and learned how to get an A by saying why The Great Gatsby was great. I didn't enjoy being disingenuous, but it seemed to be what the system required.

At last, I had reached the heart of the matter: what I had experienced as a student was causing me to fear that my son's reading preferences might be dismissed as inferior or, worse, ignorant. It was that fear more than anything else that caused me to react when I saw the book list.

Once I realized what was motivating me, I decided to talk to my son. I asked him why he wasn't objecting to the books on the list. Didn't he want to have a say in what he would read? His response (paraphrased): "I trust Curt to choose books that will teach me something I need to learn. He helped me see why it's important to study and understand the work of writers that I wouldn't necessarily read on my own or want to emulate. It's like this: you have to learn as much as you can about writing before you go off and create your own style. Just as artists like Jackson Pollack and Picasso were trained and could have easily painted in the classical style—but they chose not to—I need to master all the rules and techniques of writing before I can fully develop my own voice and style."

"Oh." He was right, of course. Humbled, I realized I had been forgetting what mattered most: Curt knows what he's doing.

All along, I had been assuming that the best books for my son to read were the ones that modeled the type of writing he clearly enjoyed reading. I had been looking for the familiar, books consistent with his past reading habits—which, apparently, is a common human tendency. As TED speaker Heffernan points out, "The way our brain takes shortcuts is to look at something and think, is this like something else I know? So we're going through life looking for matches. Now the problem with that is that what's most familiar to us is us. So anything that agrees with us, we tend to trust."

Heffernan went on to assert that contrary to what our brains seek, what we need most of all are people who will challenge us, people who see things from an entirely different perspective.

People like Proulx, Kingsolver, Cathers, and Allende.

My final conclusion regarding the proposed book list?

"It looks good to me."