Any opinions on these books from my son's Catholic high school English class?

[jeannetherese]

If it’s a Catholic school, and any of the ideas in the book go against the Catholic teachings, then I would assume that the teacher will use it as an opportunity to talk about corruption in society, about how popular media are used to justify immoral behaviors, and so on.

This is not a safe assumption.
Some teachers may not be Catholic or, some Catholic teachers may lack the formation necessary to determine when some issues presented in literature contradict the faith. Some may have a personal interest in changing the Church and use literature to push this agenda.
There are reasons why parents are reminded that they are the primary educators of their children-they need to keep in touch with their Catholic schools, administrators and teachers and encourage/ insist that each class should support and encourage rather than undermine the faith of their children.

 

[Alex337]

Bradskii:

There is nothing in any of them that could be construed as advocating anything.

Authors choose which viewpoints to present and which to omit. Books are written from a point of view and points of view may be endorsed/promoted through the writing.
Teachers and parents may want to help students determine the point of view represented in a book to better understand and critique the viewpoint and the book.

Understanding what ideas the author is presenting, how, and why is likely to be part of the course for students at that age.

 

[Alex337]

F_Marturana:

The Steven King book is a text on how to write fiction, I believe.

Exactly, I find it sort of odd to be thrown in with fiction works.

His “Dance Macabre” is another excellent non-fiction work on the genre of horror.

I’d say it’s there to help give students the tools on writing to understand and critique the fiction they’re reading.

 

[redbetta]

This professor spent a month and a half on just Act 1 of Hamlet and spent an entire class period discussing Greek yogurt after we went off on a tangent discussing Oedipus Rex. Both parents and students were pretty sure she was suffering some neurodegenerative disorder.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Ideally, however, whoever chose the books may have in mind that the students develop a better appreciation and empathy for other people’s perspectives, who come from different cultures, genders, races, classes, ages.

I’m sure that is part of the motivation, and it is likely well meant. There are high school students out there who never think of anyone else’s perspective, and I suppose even those who do could stand to have some broadening. Such topics are still not my favorites to read about though. For me at my age, certain subjects like race relations, women’s empowerment, and coping with mortality issues have just been done to death. If I never read a piece of fiction about any of those subjects again it will be too soon.

 

[meltzerboy2]

And who needs fiction for these issues: we, as a society, are currently living them.

 

[meltzerboy2]

If she really was suffering from such a disorder, she probably should not be teaching and needs medical attention and prayer. And if this is not the case but what you describe is accurate, she is more than inept.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Right. I very much prefer a good, balanced, non-fiction longform article or a news documentary.

Sadly, it is getting harder to find balanced writing or docs on these subjects…too much emo Eli Saslow stuff out there. But occasionally you can still dig up a gem in the Atlantic or even in the WaPo (not written by Saslow).

 

[anon10271182]

With one or two exceptions, as a writer I’m not a big King fan-lots of tired tropes and I think his dialog is often wooden or articial. Havent read the others.
A caveat–I took a course in “Young Adult” Fiction in my MFA program. Some of the works we read were excellent, but one was, I thought, soft porn. And “Young.Adult” means as young as 12 or 13 to some publishers and booksellers. I commend you for doing your own vetting.

 

[Entwhistler]

Austen’s books are well-written, and they have shaped out culture, yes.

Well, that’s most of the reason we read the Great Books. Because they have been so influential. Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a horribly distorted version of reality and super worldly but it’s a “Great Book” because of the tremendous impact it had.

 

[Ambasea]

Oh yeah, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t read Austen. I just think that OP complaining about the assigned books while rather having the child read Austen is a bis strange to me

 

[Peeps]

I definitely marched to a different drummer when I was growing up, but when I was in school, I read lots of really good books that were never assigned by any teacher. I know that nowadays, most kids and grownups spend more time on their phones reading social media. It’s a shame.

I think one reason I read so many books is that my favorite television and movie stars, singers, and other celebrities, would state in their interviews (in 16 magazine and Tiger Beat Magazine!) that they loved to read, and they would name their favorite authors, and I would rush to the library and check out those books so i could be just like my favorite stars!

So maybe if more actors, musicians, dancers, athletes, etc. would mention their favorite books, more kids would read! Just a thought.

Another reason that I read so much is that my mother read a lot, even though she had to drop out of high school. She would walk up to the library and return with an armload of really good books (she loved Pearl Buck, Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, Shirley Jackson, and other good authors of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Like a true bookworm, she would devour books. I admired this, and tried to be like her.

So OP, even though you don’t have a lot of reading time, maybe keep a really good book going. in any little spare moment, try to read a few paragraphs. Your son will notice and try to be like you.

 

[StephenBales]

I’d say to let your child read difficult material, in terms of content and style. Let them have a dialogue with the greatest minds of the West: Plato/Socrates/Aristotle, Dante, Cervantes’ Don Quixote is good, St. Augustine’s Confessions is good (if you think your child is skilled enough). You say you’re enrolling them in a Great Books course; if it’s even titled that, what I hope it indicates is that the curators and instructors for the course are competent. Maybe they have a reading list you could check?
If you need more, there’s a site called Intellectual Takeout. Go to the search bar and search for reading lists. They have many articles on this, and several specifically concerning kids’ reading.
Good luck!

EDIT: To address the part I bristled at most in your post:
Stephen King is boring. And profane. And remarkably unintelligent (just trust me, but if you need proof, his Twitter is that on which I base my claim). The King of the Flies is more boring, and not instructive enough to be worth it. Nickel and Dimed might be good, but at first glance seems less worthwhile than other material. (I’m judging a book by its cover, but hey, why else would they have covers with pictures and decoration and fancy font? ) The other too I don’t know about, but a couple other posters said they have sort of a feminist leaning. Yuck. I’d steer away from that.

 

[EnglishTeacher]

When I was in Public school in the early 1970’s, they taught “Lord of the Rings”, but also Scarlet Letter, Great Expectations, Crime and Punishment, Silas Marner, Moby Dick, O Pioneers

This is closer to what I would choose for a literature class. While it is fine to include a contemporary work or two on the reading list, it should not be at the expense of excluding the great classics of literature that they should be reading. It does the students a real disservice to only teach books from the past few decades, because it limits their exposure to different writing styles and to the evolution of the language throughout the centuries, not to mention familiarity with direct records of what humans have thought and felt through the ages. Limiting the reading list to modern books, as it seems many high schools are doing lately, only promotes narrowness.

On the other hand, the best way is to instill in kids a love of reading early on in life and direct them to many of the great books now and then. If you can do that, they will often read many of the classics on their own. After all, there are only so many works of literature that any course can fit in, anyway.

 

[StephenBales]

Limiting the reading list to modern books, as it seems many high schools are doing lately, only promotes narrowness.

Not only that, but it’s profoundly boring and worthless. I just finished my junior year in high school, and though my past four English classes were Pre-AP or AP, I’ve never read duller or shallower material. Young adult novels are the scourge of modernity.

 

[benjamin1973]

I’m pretty sure no teacher is reading through Lord of the Flies, and saying, “Wow! What a lot of fun these boys are having, freely expressing their own individuality.”

And if teachers are not Catholic. . . for most books, this is not an issue. For a book about embracing homosexuality, or something, then perhaps a strict Catholic parent might complain.

 

[benjamin1973]

I agree very much.

Also, one of the benefits of English class is that students should learn what good quality English looks like. This will be found much more in Dickens or Shakespeare than in Harry Potter or Captain Underpants. (Yeah the latter is a thing, I have a grade 1 son )

 

[StephenBales]

This will be found much more in Dickens or Shakespeare than in Harry Potter

Ohhhhhhh please steer your kid away from Harry Potter, if only so they won’t be sucked into a fan club around mediocrity! It won’t turn them into an evil, spell casting atheist. That’s a silly claim. But it also won’t prepare them well for when they encounter genuinely good, quality writing.

 

[benjamin1973]

The hope is that Harry Potter will be a gateway reader. I’m not sure whether that has proven to be the case.

 

[Viki63]

Now, you notice that “contemporary lit” here does not include, say, romance novels, mysteries, science fiction, or fantasy. So basically, they are giving courses in the kind of fiction that mostly isn’t read,

This is a point. To encourage students to actually read all their lives, it might be useful to introduce them to enjoyable books. Such as Dorothy Sayers’ mysteries, Ursula LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven, Bronte’s Jane Eyre for romance. not to mention the Iliad, the Odyssey, King Arthur, The Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle.
Your list would bore me to death…