In which I may unintentionally demonstrate elitism, liberal bias, or something of the sort

Dan Green kindly (I think) led me to what "Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools," a Kansas organization, considers "Great Titles for high school" and "Great Titles for 6th grade through any age". These titles, they explain, "represent some of the best examples of traditional classics, American literature, British literature, contemporary literature, and titles from authors with different cultural backgrounds. Many of these books have also been referenced on English Advanced Placement exams. Others are suggested from a variety of recommended reading lists. These books are outstanding examples of high quality literature, are absent of gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity per Blue Valley's selection policy 4600, and have one other thing in common: They are not on the "approved" reading list dated 9/2000 for Blue Valley Communication Arts (English) classes." I've read just about everything on this list, and would certainly agree that most of these novels qualify as "best examples" of "high quality literature." But I couldn't help wondering two things:

1. Has anyone associated with this group ever tried to teach pre-twentieth century literature to pre-college students--or, for that matter, to college students?
2. Has anyone associated with this group actually paid attention to the contents of the books on their list?

As a Victorianist and all, I'm certainly for teaching 19th-c. literature.  But as someone who remembers going to high school (and remembers the anecdotes of others who go to high school), I have to concede that most 19th-c. literature bores kids in their early teens out of their minds.  Bear in mind that I'm speaking as someone who, in fact, grew up on 19th-c. prose style.  It's still the case that most of the great "adult" novelists of that century require more emotional and intellectual maturity--not to mention more experience reading, period--than any early teen can be expected to have.  Certainly, a number of texts on this list would work in the average junior high or high school classroom: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Red Badge of Courage, A Raisin in the Sun, Keller's A Story of My Life, Little Women, Hans Brinker, Rip van Winkle, The Call of the Wild, Anne of Green Gables, Around the World in 80 Days, and Swiss Family Robinson.  Some of the others, however...

• I fail to see how R. D. Blackmore, G. A. Henty, Margaret Mitchell, Edna Ferber, Zane Grey, Jane Porter, and W. H. Hudson qualify as examples of "high quality literature."  They're 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-rank pop authors. I'll grant that Grey and Mitchell are very good things of their kind, respectively, but could we please refrain from trying to pass them off as the literary equivalent of, say, the apparently objectionable Toni Morrison?
• Middlemarch is not "great" for high school.  It is too long, far too difficult, and requires a level of intellectual sophistication beyond the reach of any average high schooler.  The same is true of David Copperfield, as well as just about any Dickens novel except, perhaps, the early novels and A Christmas Carol.  (We read Great Expectations at my high school, and both the bleakness and Pip's psychology were well outside anything we could appreciate at the time.)  Silas Marner and Ivanhoe were required reading when my parents were in high school: they and everyone else of their generation to whom I have ever spoken remember both books with sheer, absolute, unmitigated loathing.  Even Victorianists dislike Silas Marner, and Ivanhoe doesn't represent Scott at his most interesting (Old Mortality might be better, or The Bride of Lammermoor--but Scott's stylistic quirks probably haven't worn well for a non-specialist audience).  Very, very sophisticated seniors might be able to do something with Jane Austen, but they'd need a very, very sophisticated teacher to go along with the books.  I seem to recall finding Howard Pyle's faux "olde Englishe" rather hard going.  Moby Dick? Moby Dick?! Moby Dick?!? This would be the same novel that many college students find too difficult? And are people really reading James Fenimore Cooper with great enthusiasm these days?
• Are we absolutely sure that there's nothing parents might want to know about before reading, say, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? I presume that the authors of this list haven't looked at the unexpurgated version of Anne Frank's diary.  Given Westward Ho!'s presence, I'm guessing that Kingsley's rabid anti-Catholicism is OK with everyone, then.  And...er...there's nothing obscene in Gulliver's Travels? But at least this group doesn't object to homosexuality--or so one has to presume--given the inclusion of Master and Commander (O'Brian has both good and nasty gay characters, but the novels themselves, this one included, take a pointed pro-gay line). 
• If this group wants to ask high schoolers to read Anthony Trollope, shouldn't they read some good Anthony Trollope, as opposed to second-rate Trollope (The American Senator)? I don't know if The Warden would work or not, but, for once, it's at least a novel of the right length. 
• This list shows no sign of basic practicality or any awareness of possible pedagogical difficulties.  A number of these books are long out of print or available only in expensive editions.   While the Harry Potter series has, no doubt, accustomed many kids to reading long novels, that's not quite the same thing as saying that Harry Potter has accustomed many kids to reading nine hundred pages of George Eliot or Charles Dickens.  And, to reiterate, even some of my graduate students find 19th-c. prose style difficult to read (let alone Bunyan, Defoe, and Swift)--these are going to be high-maintenance books. 
• Incidentally, Jeff Shaara didn't write The Killer Angels--that's his father, Michael. It's Patrick O'Brian, not O'Brien, and there's only one "l" in "Helen." (Look, we all make typos in names--I've confessed to some bloopers myself--but you'd better not do it in a document arguing for higher standards.) 

ADDENDUM: In the heat of my irritation (exasperation? bafflement? aggravation? all of the above?), I failed to be specific enough about the 19th century issue: while the list is, by and large, devoted to 19th-c. lit--perhaps because the 19th c. is supposed to be "safe"--there's quite a bit of early and mid-20th-c. lit. there as well.  (Obviously, since I mention it.)  But you'd think that contemporary literature was plague-ridden, given its almost total absence.  Oh, and I forgot to rail about the inclusion of Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, but I'm sure that my readers can imagine my rant for themselves. 

Comments

[sfguy]

I agree with the points you made, and their list of "the best" is laughable, although I grudgingly concede that there is something to their point that one could probably choose a curriculum of great literature that wasn't R-rated, so why not do that.

I'm particularly struck by the absence of Shakespeare on any of their lists, either pro or con.

[Brandon]

We read The Last of the Mohicans at my high school; I think there was a general consensus in the class that the story was interesting, but there was massive dislike for the style of writing (there were complaints about the length of the sentences every single day we were reading it).

We also read Great Expectations. I'm actually inclined to think it is a viable choice for high school, not so much because it is within a high school student's ability to appreciate many of the features of the novel, but because images from it seem to stick with people - or at least, they seem to have done so with people I've talked to. And I think that's something that has to be taken into account, too - not merely whether they can appreciate its major features, but whether it's likely to haunt them even if they miss out on a lot.

[Joe]

Some excellent points.

I would also point out that on the list of about 82 books they wish were included, we find only 3 books by people of color.

The list of books the schools *do* include, but which this organization objects to, has very different proportions http://classkc.org/books.php .

"Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools" is certainly a group with an agenda. But that agenda is certainly not "literary standards."

[Adam]

A Christmas Carol is about the only Dickens good for teaching in a high school class - it's short, fun, and good - the other early stuff is never all three of those. Might raise some highbrows for religious purposes, though. But most of the others are far too long to really be taught in most classes, and the early ones, other than Christmas Carol, simply aren't nearly as good as the later ones (at least from my point of view). The plot of Oliver Twist gets ridiculous partway through, and Bleak House, which a lot of people assign, is entirely too grim to hold most people's interest nowadays. If I had to pick one to teach, I'd go with Great Expectations. It's not as long as his others, but is as good as any of them. You really need to take your time reading Dickens; it wasn't meant to be read in a couple of weeks.

Another option is Edwin Drood - it's pretty short. And you could have some fun making kids try to figure out what the ending would have been. However, it's certainly not Dickens at his best.

Were I a teacher (and I may yet become one), I'd love to teach Bleak House, my favorite of all the great novels. And yet, I'm not a fool.

[Adam]

Correction: I said "and Bleak House, which a lot of people assign...."
I meant to say "Hard Times."
Also meant "eyebrows," not "highbrows."

Sorry, I'm a big Dickens fan, and the chance to talk about him is a very rare occurance when you aren't in school. I get a bit over-eager :)

[Clancy]

Your post just brought back a flood of memories of texts I read in high school English class (admittedly, this was AP): Native Son, Black Boy, Dust Tracks on a Road, The Awakening, Crime and Punishment, Othello, The Good Earth, The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace, Light in August, and several others.

I share your shock at the "2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-rank pop authors" who are assigned. Sheesh, even certain children's books -- like, say, A Wrinkle in Time -- might be preferable to some of those on the list.

[xq]

Very well said. I can't believe some of the material they attempt to get high school students (myself included) to read and not even get into the complex nature of it all. Many of my high school English courses simply looked at the plot and never really examined anything beyond the written words...

[sfguy]

In musing over some of their suggestions tonight, I was thinking that, really, Northanger Abbey is probably a better choice for high school than either Emma or Pride and Prejudice. Particularly, if it were combined with some Gothic literature before it was taught, say Jane Eyre, or Castle of Otranto (which is short), or even Fall of the House of Usher and maybe one of the Gothic Holmes' stories, e.g., Adventure of the Speckled Band.

[Annam]

This site is hilarious. Particularly where they get emphatic that while Shaks. has risque jokes, he doesn't actually arouse the reader.

Along with Gone With the Wind (which I understand *did* arouse generations of girls) and Zane Grey, Whittaker Chambers' "Witness" is a Great Work of Literature? Add that to Kipling and the Columbus bio and it looks like a parody of a politicized Great Books list.

The reviews section is great. I particularly enjoyed the review of Black Boy: "It is a sordid story of lewd living and self indulgence."

[Sherman Dorn]

A few more comments on this are at my personal blog entry where I pointed people here. I think you struck a nerve!

[palecyreth]

After having to read Great Expectations in 8th grade (eight grade!), I was convinced I hated Dickens. Thankfully, I changed my mind after reading Our Mutul Friend in college - but, agreed, forcing kids to read these books before they're ready doesn't teach them anything except that "classic" books are boring, incomprehensible, and irrelevant.

[David]

Robertson Davies wrote a book, Shakespeare for Young Players, which was used in Middle Schools during the 40s and 50s. It gently introduced children to blank verse and various plays by offering choice scenes for classroom performance. Dickens was introduced to some children through The Dickens Reader before WWII. It really is too much to expect young readers to be able to swallow whole novels or 5 act plays.

[Mychelline]

I'm not an academic (well, I'm a science grad student), and I haven't read most of the books listed, but I do feel I have to speak up in defense of _Ivanhoe_, which we read in H.S., and I really liked. Of course, I identified most strongly with the Jewish girl (was it Roxanne? it was 20+ years ago), which was probably not the author's intent...

I agree that you probably need to be fairly mature *and* well-read to appreciate some of this kind of stuff, and that doesn't describe most h.s. (or college) students. Me, my only hobby from age 5 or so on, was reading anything I could get my hands on. Did broaden my horizons about social encounters I'd never experienced, but wasn't much help with my age-peers.

[Tim Peoples]

In Chopin's Awakening, "orgasm and suicide are two major topics." Yet these people have no problem with Portrait, which features a transcendant sexual experience with a hooker AND the abandomnent of a young man's faith. Not that I like Chopin's short novel (I can't seem to finish it), but arguing for "moral" literature requires a consistent approach.

Also, the most contemporary on their list of desired books is Corretta Scott King's autobiography (60's? 70's?). (I only mention this because contemporary literature is my main interest.)

[Gabriella Gruder-Poni]

I did go to an excellent high school, but even allowing for that, I think many of these comments are shockingly condescending to teenagers.
While I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the Austen (P & P) or the Dickens (GA, OT, To2C) I had to read in HS, _Middlemarch_, which I read on my own when I was 15 or 16, changed my life.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned _Crime and Punishment_, which everyone in my class loved. I think the shorter works of Tolstoy would also go over well.