Have you ever wondered how many books there are in the world? According to Mashable.com, in 2010 Google once ran an algorithm to try and see how many books have been published in all of modern history. The algorithm came up with nearly 130 million books, 129, 864, 880 to be exact. So here is my question: if there are all of these books, why am I studying the same novels that my mother did when she was in high school?
Classics will always be classics, but the times have changed. I will not identify as strongly with the themes against racism as a child in the 70s would have. I will enjoy the way Shakespeare's uses iambic pentameter poetry, but I will continue to speak in prose.
We are taught the same content year after year, and soon it piled up to be decade after decades of students writing essays on Appearance vs Reality displayed in the work of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and every single other sonnet he's written.
I have had teachers that have said "This year we are going to see if we can read this play instead of Shakespeare's, because I'm tired of Hamlet too." and honestly, I do not have a problem with that. Think about those teachers who have taught English for 10+ years, all they do is reread the same play to a different set of students who still do not know what Shakespeare is saying - I have sat in classrooms where students nearly fall asleep to the plays because, they cannot understand them. However, I find that the hardest part in studying Shakespeare is not the language, but the teacher. If you have a different insight than what the teacher has cultivated after so many years of studying the work, no matter what you say or how you explain yourself, it's still different from the teacher's and in the end, a low mark because they cannot see your perspective. This struggle can happen with any book that you come across in class if the teacher has read it so many times.
Of Mice and Men, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Lord of The Flies, The Scarlet Letter, Animal Farm; all of these works are staples in the English curriculum. Yes, there are strong moral characters, themes, and lessons for one to learn from in all of these works, but tell me, which 17 year old in my class is going to think about Atticus Finch when they're older and it's tax season.
If your argument is that we are told to read these, because they are good books that help to make us critical thinkers, then I want you look at the large number that's in the opening of this post; there are so many other well-written novels that can teach us life lessons or be thought provoking. Take I am Malala, as an example. It is a book about a girl who is close to my age and is written in my time, that deals with events like the empowerment that comes with educating females and a patriarchy society that violently reacts to it. It is even set in the middle east, a place that is up for lots of talk in my current day. In a sense, her autobiography is like the modern day version of Anne Frank's diary. I am sure that studying something more current like I am Malala, would be more impactful on students than books that over 20 years old.
One will always be deeply saddened by Tom Robinson's murder, but it will not inspire a 17 year old of 2017 , in the same way as it would for one in 1960 - the year the book was published.
Nelson Mandela recognized that "education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world" but how can we, if all we do is read the same words over and over again expecting different results?