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I think, instead of being forced to do assigned reading in school, which tends to make people end up as adults who never read, teachers should alternate between two options:

1. Give students a curated list of books from which they can choose to read and do book reports that focus on giving their honest opinions of the books, guided by a list of suggestions for things to talk about. Did you like the book? What did you like about it, if anything? What did you dislike? Did you dislike one or more of the characters? Something about the plot? What critiques and/or praise would you give the author? What suggestions would you give the author? Did you connect with / relate to any of the themes of the book? Did you relate to any of the struggles or joys of any of the characters? Etc etc. (Encouraging the students to think about what they're reading.)

2. Same as above, except this time with books of the student's choosing from anywhere -- libraries, personal collections, web fiction, fanfic, etc. These would also have suggestions for the students to try to convince others that their book of choice is good literature worth reading, and if they hype up the book well enough, the book stands a good chance of being added to the curated list mentioned in option number 1.

I especially think this is important because academics tend to have these insular ideas of what counts as good literature and what doesn't, ideas that usually end up mostly promoting dead old white men with books that are so old that the modern reader struggles to read them -- even the readers who enjoy reading books like that.

That tendency of academics, including teachers, having such insular notions of what constitutes good literature also excludes a lot of not just modern literature in general but entire genres like science fiction, and also excludes a lot of minorities like LGBT folks and black people, indigenous people, and others.

I don't think doing things this way is going to be very quick at getting that kind of conservative, classist, and racist insularism out of academia in general and especially the upper echelons of academia, but I think it's very important that we introduce this technique into public schools as a requirement for at least the middle school and high school levels of English class to kind of counterbalance these insular attitudes as they've been taught to the teachers, and introduce children to this technique before they can have their love of reading beaten out of them by the more rigid and outdated white patriarchal system. It would also serve the function of introducing that broader spectrum of literature and appreciation for it to future teachers at a young age.

Oh, and of course it would also serve a much needed broadening of students' perspectives about the world in general at an early age which can only be good for the country especially when it comes to discouraging racism and fascism. Especially so if you alternate the curated lists for option number one to include various themes that would help broaden students' perspectives.

Like for instance: yes, there is "The Grapes of Wrath," but under that book's themes of poverty, classism, the failures of capitalism, etc, there are likely other books that may be more accessible to younger readers and readers of the modern era that might eventually lead them to want to read "The Grapes of Wrath" instead of it being forced on them. And it's so very much easier to learn something when you are interested in it, and it's entertaining or at least engaging, than it is when you're being forced to do something.

For instance, "The Murderbot Diaries" series by Martha Wells has very strong anti-capitalist themes to it, but it's also really fun, really funny, and very entertaining. Or how something like "The West Side Story" could get kids interested in the story of Romeo and Juliet.

I say all this not just because the US education system is churning out a lot of students that once used to love reading and now only read if they absolutely have to, but also because even though I never lost my love of reading, I still hated virtually everything that the English teachers forced on us. Occasionally these books turned out to be pretty decent, but more often than not I just had no interest in any of those books, they were waaayyy too much effort to get through, and in retrospect I was able to see how if even someone who loves to read can struggle that much with the assigned reading, that it's really no wonder so many other students are just getting so fed up with that bullshit that they just give up on reading entirely, and I think this plan of mine that I've laid out in this post would go a long way towards fixing that. It wouldn't take care of it entirely because there is a lot of other reading required in academia, but I think the above technique paired with a great reduction in the homework would be a really good combo, especially since study after study after study has shown that homework doesn't really help with anything, it's mostly not merely useless, but actively counterproductive. It's mostly just busy work that accomplishes nothing but creating burnout in students, and is a function of the capitalist desire to forge students into good little worker robots.

But that attitude of turning students into worker robots is severely outdated, since that was started at the height of the US's manufacturing industry, which doesn't really exist anymore in the information age. So that is not the world we live in anymore, and what we really need in the world is for people to be as intelligent as they can be, as flexible and open-minded as can be, as creative as can be, and with a willingness (and even love) to read even into adulthood. So very many things about modern society could be fixed if people would actually take the time and effort to read and to be able to do it well, with the time and effort they take being willing enough on their part that it is just a habit and not something people have to force themselves to do. Which can only happen if we find some way to teach literature in a way that retains people's love of reading.

This is of course only one small part of the problem and one small solution for that part, because just everything about Western education standards beats the creativity and desire to learn about the world out of children, and a great many of them just never recover from that. But I don't want to write an entire book about this on here, so that's all for now.