I can’t remember every title on those high school required reading lists, but here are some of the highlights:

Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, MacBeth, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew

East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye, Ethan Frome, To Kill A Mockingbird, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Once and Future King, The Scarlet Letter, All Quiet On the Western Front, Profiles In Courage

There were also poets – not whole books, but select pieces: Choose Something Like a Star, The Red Wheelbarrow, How Do I Love Thee?, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, For Whom the Bell Tolls(No Man Is an Island), The Raven

And there were excerpts: The Grand Inquisitor (The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky), The Allegory of the Cave (Plato’s Republic), the Bible, Aesop’s Fables, Grimm’s Fairy Tales

For almost every book assigned, someone in my class asked the teacher why it was required. Most answered with a perfunctory It’s good for you, and you’ll need to know it when you go to college. Only two of my teachers gave different answers.

Because through these words you will come to understand what it means to be human. (Mr. Quimby)

These books will help you ask the truly important questions. (Mr. Hewitt)

The first answer was an honest one, and a small one. Wasn’t anything valuable about the reading other than some future benefit exclusively for the college bound learners? Shouldn’t learning be about something bigger than this?

The other two answers left some breathing room; they included and were big enough for every student -in the present. To be drawn into the story of someone else’s life, to experience another way to be human, to ask the big questions: the right words can do this.

So can the right teachers…