Jane is right to worry about whether having students pick their own books will only produce a generation of know-nothings who think their own tastes are valid enough. What we need to do is find ways to encourage book culture among the young, and then ratchet up the high-school classroom to Great Books. It used to be the second step that was the difficult one as progressivist educators and “relevance-mongers” knocked the classics as dry-as-dust, Eurocentric, and out of touch. Now, however, it’s the first step that’s in danger.
Kids grow up with so many screens around them, so many devices and messages and images that flatter their habitats and thwart their growth, that books of any kind, Great or not, appear an outmoded, obsolete, downright slow artifact. And we can’t get them to Dickens unless they warm up with Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, sports, adventure, romance, etc. — lots of it. We need volume reading, thousands of pages, hours each day.