The opposite day, considered one of my college students instructed me that she’d been assigned the lyrics of Kendrick Lamar for her highschool English class. It was the primary time I had encountered a highschool English project involving an writer with whom I used to be wholly unfamiliar.
However can we even name rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar an writer, his lyrics literature? Name me a snob, however I’d argue that we can not and mustn’t, particularly at a stage so introductory to the English literary canon as highschool. Highschool curricula are supposed to current a broad and foundational overview of the vital tenets of every core subject of data: arithmetic, science, literature, historical past and language.
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Many highschool college students are already consuming Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift each day with out the intervention of the training system. For my part, utilizing course time to research the lyrics of those well-liked artists not solely precludes college students from uncovering new information but in addition encourages them to contemplate the fleeting music of our time — most of which, I predict, will likely be forgotten within the span of a era — as nice literature.
We educate ideas in algebra and calculus that may set up a strong base of data ought to a scholar resolve to pursue greater ranges of arithmetic in faculty or graduate college. We don’t substitute shapes and colours for the core ideas of algebra — that would depart a scholar misplaced ought to they resolve to pursue a level in math or another STEM topic.
So why have we swapped out Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens for figures who’re — at greatest — ancillary to literary examine? Shouldn’t we educate college students concerning the works of the Shakespeares and the Chaucers that English literature relies on — relatively than current them with the phrases of up to date songwriters corresponding to Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift, whose works would possibly belong fully to a special class?
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As educators, the destiny of tomorrow’s change-makers rests in our arms, and it’s our aim to rear the following era of profitable thinkers. There is no such thing as a higher option to educate college students to assume than to encourage them to wrestle with the type of complicated concepts that we discover in time-tested literature. We should not, due to this fact, alter our mental requirements or deem literature unimportant and pretentious, particularly for college kids who’re at such an important interval of their mental improvement. It’s our job to information college students to aspire to mental mountaintops relatively than confining them to extra acquainted valleys.
At a sure level, we do want to begin distinguishing between foundational literature and the musical byproducts of our up to date tradition. New York College can supply as many Taylor Swift programs because it needs, and there is perhaps nothing incorrect with finding out Taylor Swift as literature — however that ought to not occur till college students have attained a strong understanding of the literary custom.
At the highschool stage, we must always problem youthful generations to know the core aspects of the humanistic custom by presenting them with an correct image of what the sphere of literary examine has all the time been: a profound exploration of the human situation by means of phrases and tales. These tales, expressed by means of vivid works of literature, will, in flip, compel them to assume critically.
I educate writing to excessive schoolers by means of my faculty consulting agency. When making ready college students to jot down their faculty essays, I all the time lead with literature — Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Fitzgerald, as an illustration — for I imagine that creating robust communication expertise lies in understanding the writing types and messages of those nice thinkers and writers.
Lots of my college students, who will quickly be sending in functions to America’s elite academic establishments, can not string a coherent sentence collectively with out utilizing AI instruments corresponding to ChatGPT or Grammarly. Whereas there is perhaps nothing incorrect with utilizing these instruments as guidebooks and coaches, doing so should not come on the expense of creating robust writing expertise, that are the cornerstone of robust communication. A era that has misplaced the flexibility to jot down will lose the flexibility to impact significant societal change, for excellent change lies in successfully sharing concepts with others.
The scholars I work with are our future docs, engineers and legal professionals, amongst many different professions. In diluting their highschool English curricula, we’re collectively abandoning humanistic examine as a society, letting go of our dedication to creating robust thinkers and visionaries. Whereas not all lecturers have swapped out Shakespeare for Swift, the presence of rappers and songwriters on an English syllabus is a telling signal that we now have begun to alter the requirements of crucial pondering and not emphasize the worth of tolerating communication.
I all the time immediate my college-bound college students to problem themselves intellectually. As a substitute of endlessly scrolling by means of Taylor-Swift TikToks, why not choose up a replica of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”? As I ship my college students off to varsity yearly, a lot of them look again and thank me for encouraging them to make it by means of this literary behemoth, for there’s a sure ineffable satisfaction to difficult your self to have interaction critically with concepts: It makes us all stronger thinkers and communicators.
And I assure you that any 15-year-old can comprehend critical literature with the precise mindset and the precise mentorship.
As English lecturers, our aim is to problem our college students to assume critically with the intention to create the robust communicators of tomorrow — and hope that within the course of, they’ll view literature not as pretentious however as stunning and profound.
Liza Libes based her faculty consulting startup, Invictus Prep, in New York Metropolis. Her writing has appeared in The American Spectator, Kveller, Jewish Ladies of Phrases and elsewhere.
This story about highschool English was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, unbiased information group targeted on inequality and innovation in training. Join Hechinger’s weekly e-newsletter.
