A Bad Choice

Having been a victim of the American education system, I know full well the failures of such a system. Not only are schools lacking in good teachers, but the curriculum is lacking even a basic semblance to important subject matter.

Schools no longer put enough emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead they are busy teaching home economics, computer skills and child development. Not much is ever asked of students. American students spend less time in the classroom than students in almost any other industrialized nation. Students are not comprehensively tested and are rarely even expected to conduct intense research. What is more, nearly no significance is placed on the art of penmanship or on memorization of poems, speeches, etc. The singular most important concept which schools implement is that of the required reading list.

The required reading list is often a list of books which students are expected to read each year. Oftentimes, students are tested on the content of their readings and receive credit for having completed their lists. The books on this list vary, but usually include To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and a number of more current books more intended for certain age groups. Now, however, a number of schools (most recently in Georgia) are trying to renovate these lists, allowing students to read whichever books they choose as long as that number adds up the the number of books required for that year. This leads students to find books which they find interesting and complete their lists with relative ease.

Such a system clearly illustrates the lack of responsibility or academic expectations which we place on students. As students obtain a choice in their readings, they begin choosing new and 'exciting' books which don't share the stuffy and intellectual subjects which infiltrate the classics. Teachers and parents tout that a choice system will get students to read. This is true, but what will they gain from their readings?

It's no secret that today's literature lacks the creativity, the elegance, the genius and the significance of the classics. Instead they are often flat, static and full of characters that are worse actors than those playing in soap operas and Twilight movies. The classics: Hemingway, Dumas, Hugo, Rand, Capote, Dickens, Machiavelli, de Tocqueville, Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, Augustine, Cicero, Aquinas, etc., they teach their readers more than just what's written, they teach their students how to analyze and interpret complex subjects such as futility, loss, jealousy, justice, equality, love and will. They teach their readers to look between the lines and associate deeply and spiritually with the characters, characters which embody and personify ethereal and dynamic existence. They teach their readers to enjoy and respect a good plot and experience the emotions which radiate from the ink. To my knowledge few such books have been written in the last 20-30 years.

It is certainly imperative that students read, however, it is more imperative that students draw something from what they read and come away with new and better ideas. It is the ideas within books that matter, not the fact that they contain words. So, to allow students to read whatever books they want is to allow them to bypass and reject the ideas which this great country was founded on. Instead of pondering the thoughts which the classics conjure, students will instead be exposed to base and trivial subjects as teenage vampire love. If America is to proceed with damning our students to lives of relative intellectual poverty and ignorance, then perhaps we should just throw in the towel.