Do you think that classic literature still has a relevant place in high school English classes, or should the concentration be more on new literature?

I’m making my academic career out of pre-Renaissance and Renaissance literature, so I’m a little biased, I suppose. I think that much of Renaissance literature still speaks to us today, so why not 19th-century literature?

The great writers will always be relevant, and that’s what makes them great.

I think that classic literature is vitally important. The themes are universal and very relevant to our time. It is also a great introduction to other times and other cultures.

I believe that there should be a mixture of both. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t read older literature. I absolutely love it!

Yes classic literature is vitally important. Also, at least some exposure to modern literature should also be taught. But modern literature is already being offered to children in stores, in the form of films, etc.

One of the valuable lessons of studying past literature is that it teaches students about the past, in the language of the past, by people from the past.

Another great thing about the classics is that they have been filtered by many years of critical scholarship, and so they tend to be excellent works of literature.

Literature…. what the hell is that? I think it’s novels or plays or poems that a lot of people have liked over the time since they were written. I think it is the works that people refer to over and over, and that, if you don’t know them, you look kind of foolish.

So yeah, they should be read by today’s children just so they can know what people are talking about. They are part of the culture, just as hip hop and gutter punk culture is.

I think it is also necessary for people to keep up on current culture as well. Those who don’t have equal difficulty catching on to references and thus can be lost in many conversations.

Classic literature doesn’t go out of date and it doesn’t exclude modern writing. The two can go together very well.

Well, @jca , I don’t know how old you are, but I have many decades behind me and that stuff was classic when I read it in school, and I don’t think it’s lost any value since then. Modern lit should be taught as well, it’s all part of a cultural experience.

Italo Calvino wrote a wonderful essay titled “Why Read the Classics?” that questioned not only the relevance of “classical literature” but how we determine what constitutes a classical work of literature. We discussed the paper and our own opinions in depth during my Senior Symposium course and the consensus was that although classics are still relevant in the discourse of literature what we consider classic varies across the board.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Edgar Allen Poe? Didn’t read any of them in high school. Not for my classes anyway (and I was an honors / AP student.) Do I wish I had read them back then? Of course.

@muppetish – Speaking of Calvino, now there’s some modern literature that ought to be taught in schools. That guy was a genius.

@Seelix Absolutely. Our Symposium course was devoted to Calvino (because it was assumed—accurately, I might add—that none of the students would have read him in any previous courses.) We covered If on a winter’s night a traveler, Mr. Palomar (which I wrote my paper on), The Castle of Crossed Destinies, The Nonexistent Knight, and Six Memos for the Next Millennium. I need to read the Cloven Viscount and pick up copies of t zero and Invisible Cities. I adore Calvino.

Absolutely. The themes explored in the great classics are universal. Often, the second and third read of such classics offer a new perspective, new insight, etc.
I do think there needs to be more room made for the study of modern texts though.

Considering classic literature is how we homeschool our child, and is how our homeschooled nieces and nephews are learning, yes literature is relevant today.

Do I think most high-schoolers can relate? Not many. Most of them are taught to learn from text books and aren’t encouraged to read for pleasure.

Maybe it is just me, but there is a vast difference in an English class to a literature class. The former focuses on the proper structure of the English language, while the latter relies on the studies of literature in all forms and languages.

With that said, yes, I support the study of certain classics. It provides an education on history, culture, and imagination.

Yes, but I think it should be actual classics – Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe, stuff that isn’t just considered a good read but is so widely influential that not being familiar with it puts one at a serious disadvantage for putting other things in context – not these crap “classics” that everyone reads in high school, but then never gives two s**ts about again (::cough, cough:: Bless Me Ultima ::cough, cough::). The rest of the time, do stuff that’s actually modern, not “was modern at one point, and that’s why it got assigned in the first place, but is no longer relevant or as relevant as other choices to today’s youth”.

I don’t think the time that a book was written should be a determining factor in putting together a basic high school reading list. It’s far more important to select quality books that are accessible to high schoolers. Making them read classics just because they’re classics or because they’ve been on the reading list for ages is a terrible thing to do. That’s the sort of thinking that has had generations on teenagers gnashing their teeth over Ethan Frome and that doesn’t do anyone any good.

I’d rather be light on classics than turn students against them by forcing them on them. Seriously. Who thinks a 15 year old should be assigned Ethan Frome?

Classic literature is just as important as modern literature because they’re such vastly different things. To truly understand modern literature, you need to compare it to classic, and vice versa. Even comparing the radical writers of classic literature to writers of the more modern era is intriguing.

We were assigned Dickens’ Great Expectations my freshman year of high school and while I loved it, a lot of people didn’t, so a lot should depend on specific classes later on for the student to choose themselves. But I feel that reading some Dickens, some Joyce, some Salinger, some Dante, even Robert Heinlein or Alan Moore, Tim O’Brien et cetera.. gives students a nice balance in their reading.

Classic lit. is great if you know what to read. Think Chaucer, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Mellvile (I wouldn’t say Dickens is a must though – found GE rather boring actually). IMHO it should stay.

Just to illustrate:

“All is fair in love and war” (lots of people think it a Shakespeare quote btw. while in fact it’s from The Knight’s tale, Canterbury tales by G. Chaucer)
“We Are Seven” by W. Wordsworth (just read it, the rythm of the poem is amazing!)
“Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by S.T. Coleridge (great tale, great language, great moral)

And finally, my favourite quote of all, from H. Mellvile’s Moby Dick:

“When­ever I find myself grow­ing grim about the mouth; when­ever it is a damp, driz­zly Novem­ber in my soul; when­ever I find myself invol­un­tar­ily paus­ing before cof­fin ware­houses, and bring­ing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and espe­cially when­ever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral prin­ci­ple to pre­vent me from delib­er­ately step­ping into the street, and method­i­cally knock­ing people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my sub­sti­tute for pis­tol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to
the ship.”

What I wanted to say by all of this is that not only does old lit. often have relevance still in our lives (the Moby Dick quote often does for me for instance), but it is also beautiful in form and a pleasure to read, and under no circumstances should it be downplayed!

The great thing about literature is that it takes us out of our familiar lives into different situations, places and times. Why would we ever want to restrict it?