Unpopular Opinion: Some Books Are More Important Than Others

There I said it.

I’m not sorry.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, for the whole ten years I’ve been teaching high school ELA, and I’m ready to say that some books are more important than others.

I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with reading to escape, to relax, to be entertained. That’s all great. But in the classroom, we aren’t training students to read so they can escape the real world. We’re teaching them to read to be more present in the world—to be a fully-actualized citizen of planet Earth.

Somewhere along the way, English teachers started apologizing for asking students to read books that might seem hard, boring, long, or complicated. We got this idea that students should choose the texts that interest them. We got this idea that if they learn to love the reading activity, they’ll drift into some of those important books later.

I don’t agree with that.

There’s a quote by Ray Bradbury that haunts me:

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

As English teachers, we are the keepers of essential cultural texts by great writers and thinkers from Toni Morrison to F. Scott Fitzgerald. We aren’t entertainers. We aren’t sales reps for Harper-Collin’s. We’re teachers.

I don’t want to be mistaken for a traditionalist. I think English teachers have a responsibility to question and even break open the traditional canon. I don’t think books are more important because someone in an ivory tower or Oprah says so.

These are some reasons a text would be “important” enough to get air-time in my classroom. The more of these boxes a text checks, the more time and attention I’d want to give it.

• The characters are complicated and make complicated decisions. They change internally not just externally.

• The text gives students a window into a specific time or identity. It broadens their worldview.

• The text explores a theme or topic that is especially timely.

• The prose are artful and enhance the depth and meaning of the work.

I’m thinking about this a lot this summer because I’m going through a kind of metamorphosis. This coming year, I’ll be teaching a new age group (7th and 8th grade ELA). I’m setting up a new classroom and choosing new books to read with my students, and I’m running into some decor that kind of bugs me. Signs that just say things like “READ,” for example.

I’m worried we inadvertently send a message to students that we are trying to micromanage their hobbies rather than guiding them to the best, most challenging, most meaningful texts. I don’t think that will work. From my experience, kids who already enjoy reading will read during independent reading and kids who don’t will pretend to read. Just forcing (or inviting) them to do reading will not show them why it matters. At least, it hasn’t in my ten years of trying to make it work.

So here’s another unpopular opinion, I think we’re overprescribing independent reading in ELA classrooms and under prescribing reading out loud to students and navigating books together.

That’s what I’m going to focus on this year in my classroom. We’ll see how it goes.