Students deserve better than easy

Maybe I'm a big nerd -- okay, maybe? -- but I can't help making connections, hypothesizing, philosophizing, evaluating and all that other level six stuff. While studying and taking the GRE (entrance into grad school exam), I couldn't help to feel ashamed at my lack of literary repertoire. Even as an English major and one who's thoroughly enjoyed reading (some of my best memories were spent up in the tree reading Hatchet, Boxcar Children, etc), I am clearly not what people who made this test would call well-read. I am not completely discouraged at this, since now I have a vast book list filled with items to grow my intellectual compasity and expand my understanding of the world and human endeavors (of good and evil).

What I connected this to, however, is the growing emphasis on young adult novels being adopted into my teaching curriculum. Just a small chunk of low-down-info, for the honors class I'm teaching next year, we are required to teach a teen novel. Right now, my fellow teachers from across the district and I are choosing one of three delightful little reads (sarcasm inserted). Now I'm not against teens reading teen novels by any means. What I am against is using valuable classroom time (of which I'm becoming more and more aware of its brevity) and valuable instruction time for kids - who choose to be in an honors class - to read something that they could easily read on their own time and could easily deduce the profound (sarcasm again) meanings without my help. The argument by the team who gave us this requirement for the teen novel is that the students need diversity, whether that diversity of old vs. new or hard vs. easy, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll find that out in meetings to come.

My arguments, keeping in mind my connection to the GRE, are the following:

1) Students who choose (as they do in our district) to be in an honors class are signing up for challenge and rigor. The object of most teen novels is to reach out to kids who usually don't like to read by giving them easy-to-understand storylines about topics that interest them. These kids should already like to read if they enroll in honors class, and therefore the purpose of the teen novel is a moot point.

2) There are so many great works out there that have stood the test of time because their themes and ideas are universal and long lasting. Teen novels are usually pretty narrowly focused and deal with current, selfish, or trite issues - hence the simplicity noted above. Teen novels usually aren't "real life" as their promoters say. They usually focus on the tough problems that plague maybe 3% of teens. And worse, they usually promote self-centeredness, which is so prevalent already that it should not be encouraged even more.

3) I want my kids to read something that will benefit them having read it. These future AP or IB students should have guided access to as many works as possible that will help them succeed. I remember when I was given an AP reading list of about 100 books in high school, I was overwhelmed because we only read like 3 in class, and so I was expected to read as many as I could on my own. When studying for the GRE, I was likewise overwhelmed at all the works and authors I was expected to know. Therefore, why not give these young scholars as much deep literature as we can while we have them under our guidance. I would much rather be able to help my students through Orwell's 1984 than expect them to read and understand it on their own time because I'd rather teach them something that is more fun, easy, and "applicable" to them.

Softening them up is preparing them for failure, or at least overwhelmedness, like me.