The text from the young teacher comes in on Saturday. They want to start reading Lord of the Flies or maybe Hatchet with their intermediate ESL class. They’ve looked into purchasing copies, but it’s expensive. Maybe they could just print the pdf of the book, chapter by chapter? How do I buy books for kids?
I am quietly stunned. I sit with this for a few minutes, trying to decide where to begin my response. Finally, I point out that printing the entire book for 20 students is still expensive – we just transfer the expense to the school. Then, I suggest that the school has books – in both the ESL and the English departments. Then I pause.
In my next series of messages, I say that I find LOTF and Hatchet to be at very different levels. I casually note that neither of them has any female characters. (To be fair, in Hatchet Brian at least has a mother; no women exist in LOTF – just British schoolboys as far as the mind can fathom.) I wait again before adding that LOTF makes some “weird” arguments about the importance of British schooling for a civilized society.
I do not say that LOTF has a peculiarly western view of humans as inherently selfish and vaguely awful. I do not say that when a group of school boys were actually marooned on an island, they did not descend into chaos or madness. Instead, they worked together, supporting one another through hardships. I do not say that perhaps students from around the world will not be intrigued by stories in which western boys fight to dominate nature. Instead, I offer to brainstorm some other options and take the teacher on a tour of our tiny book room. They say yes.
Later that day, I read an article in the New York Times about The Great Gatsby turning 100. I love Gatsby and I love teaching it, though I haven’t taught it in a while. I have my reasons – its casual racism, its core critique of the American Dream in an era when that is all too easy – though I would probably teach it again if I could shoehorn it in somewhere. Still, I’m struck when the article reminds me that, upon the novel’s publication, “Reviewers shrugged. Sales were sluggish. The novel and its author slid toward obscurity.” I disagree with the early reviewers, but I find it interesting that the novel was not immediately seen as “classic” or even very good.
LOTF was similarly poorly received at first, and I can reel off a list of other books English teachers love that had rough starts – from Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights to Animal Farm and The Handmaid’s Tale with plenty of others in between. I’d love to point this out to those who wander through English offices saying things like, “there’s a reason they’re classics.”
In fact, someone said exactly that in our English office not too long ago. My most effective approach to these platitudes is a lot of listening seasoned with a well-timed word or two, so I let the teacher talk. Eventually, they pointed out that part of the reason that it’s hard to find new “classics” is because books need to be “just right” to work in a classroom – not too long, not too spicy, not too hard, not too dull. They need approachable literary devices and characters that are relatable.
By this metric, Gatsby, LOTF and even To Kill a Mockingbird are classics in no small part because of their length and lack of curse words. They have a plot and characters we can remember, so, assuming we ignore the racism and sexism and similarity in their world views, we can’t really go wrong.
I point out that “not too hard and not too long” means that our list has to keep changing. When I started teaching, The Scarlet Letter was on every high school bookshelf; now, the language makes it extremely challenging, so it is taught much less frequently. When I was in high school, everyone read Dickens. Now, his work is just too long and wordy. What has replaced these “classics”? I toy with the idea that The Outsiders is on the list; in the 70s and early 80s, it was just a good book to read. What about The Handmaid’s Tale? Atwood is Canadian, but we don’t teach her novel too often – too political or too long? I don’t know. Why has Their Eyes Were Watching God not made it into rotation in Canada? I have no idea.
I love to say that when we read everything, we can read anything, but many of our students are not reading everything or even very much at all. As a result, the books schools choose to offer take on outsized importance; each book is expected to do the work of ten: catch student interest, teach something worthwhile, be a paragon of “good” writing, reflect what our society can/ should be and more. Sadly – or maybe happily – no one book can be everything we want because good stories are, by design, problematic. To really use literature as a teaching tool, we need lots of it.
I don’t know how to make that happen, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t start by teaching students who are learning English in Canada in 2025 about shipwrecked British schoolboys in the 1940s. I’m going to suggest we start somewhere else.
Persistence and Pedagogy 
My daughter’s grade 8 class is reading The Outsiders and it’s taking everything I have not to challenge the teacher. This is their first (only?) novel study of the year. It’s been all short stories up until now. My daughter remembers the name or content of zero of these stories.
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I have grade 9 students who *LOVE* The Outsiders. I mean LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Some of these kids are from other countries and grew up speaking other languages – not what I would expect, but there it is. It’s yet another reason that I know that no book is inherently right or wrong in and of itself.
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sadly I’ve been book shamed for “classics” I have or haven’t read and often it circles back to the tax bracket of the school and availability of texts of “quality” – as an ESL teacher myself, I can see the value in reading a sampling of “American/English classics” for cultural relevance. But agree that some are stronger choices than others. I teach elem and “classics” are much less important than learning how to read, period! Thanks for sharing this post, I think about this topic a lot actually!
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I’m sorry you’ve been shamed – that should NOT happen. I think about this topic a lot, too! I work in a poor school and, in addition to a lack of texts, this means that we have a lot of new teachers who come through the building. In many ways, this is great because we have lots of enthusiasm – like Saturday texts and novel studies for kids who might not otherwise get that. It also means that, as an experienced teacher, I have a lot of spaces where I want to reflect deeply on what we teach and why. None of these books is inherently a bad choice, but every book is a choice (even if our resources are limited); I figure I can help teachers be aware of the choice they’ve made and go from there. (PS I’m currently teaching Hamlet – the grandaddy of “classic” lit – heeheehee.)
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“To really use literature as a teaching tool, we need lots of it.” Exactly this.
The notes you make on the weight each book we teach has now is so real. I’ve had my share of chapter book read alouds on rotation since teaching 5th grade, some more “problematic” than others (though usually that’s because I teach in a very wealthy, mostly Catholic private school in Florida). I’ve also seen how based on the group I have and the students in front of me, I can’t just do the same books each year (I sliced about abandoning one read aloud this year that just fell flat for my students). With limited time, we end up having to give up teaching some things depending on the books chosen.
I’m grateful for the teachers and my parents who instilled a love of reading in me. And that’s my goal for my students, to spark something for them to keep reading and hone their skills.
I could keep going on and on but will stop now. Great slice!
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Amanda, I enjoyed reading your post. It had me thinking a lot about choosing books for students which is a provocative topic. I agree with the difficulty in finding a really good book for all to read in a classroom. I remember teaching A Tale of Two Cities, The Scarlet Letter, and a few I would never want to read again. Getting kids engaged in a text is key, and I appreciate your thoughtful ruminations about how to respond to the beginning teacher’s question. I honestly think your post needs to be read by many. You should consider trying to publish it somewhere.
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I enjoyed how you let us see your thinking as you prepared to respond. This is a situation that I have been in at the elementary level too. It’s hard for some people to see past the canon or the things that have always been taught, but I find many times they are open to other options and I’m so glad we have them.
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Amanda,
You ask hard questions. This one about what makes a classic elicits answers grounded in white colonial privilege. Here’s my two cents worth: I don’t give a 💩 about classics if they harm in any way, as all the books you mentioned as classics have the potential of doing, especially w/ second language learners, and the goal should be to turn kids into lovers of reading, and that ain’t happening. I love Gatsby, but if I were teaching it now, I’d reference something John Green says about those last lines when Fitzgerald talks about the “first” settlers, as though no native people were here before. I did teach Their Eyes Were Watching God my last year to AP Lit students. They loved it. Every teacher needs to choose books to teach that grow readers as a first priority. I have a MA in English lit, and let me tell you, not one professor focused discussions on literary devices first. We talked about ideas. What does a book say about life and human nature. That’s the litmus test, and I will die on that hill.
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Such an important and thought-provoking post. I have to say that after teaching middle school for so many years, The Outsiders was the one book most students loved. I have since taught at a community college and when I ask students what books they have loved – inside and outside of school, they often cite The Outsiders. I’m with you on LOTF. Just not that relatable. I love the sentiment of Glenda’s last few lines of her post. Thanks for opening up this dialogue.
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You offer so much reflection in this slice; I appreciate how you thoroughly listen to the teacher. This is cognitive coaching- asking the right questions and getting the teacher to think through decision making. A sneak peek into your thought process is equally important. At a presentation I attended, Jason Reynolds had said that if you teach an older text, you should pair it with something current, to analyze how context plays a role and how ideas change. There are so many relevant texts out there- anything by Kelly Yang, I’m OK by Patti Kim, Invisible by Christina Diaz Gonzalez, I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib, just to name a few of my favorites. Thank you for your work in guiding teachers to find stories that resonate with our students.
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