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To teach the classics, or not to teach the classics? That is the question.

Getting a read on the next generation

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
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Shelby Shepherd wears a judge’s robe and holds a gavel in her hand as high school students file into her classroom.

They’ve just finished reading Mary Shelley’s classic novel “Frankenstein,” which means Dr. Victor Frankenstein is set to be tried for reckless abandonment in the literary court of Shepherd’s classroom. After weeks of diving into case studies of human genetic experiments, discussing ethics in science and pondering whether a creator should be held accountable for his creations, the mock trial begins.

This is just one of the ways Shepherd inspires intrigue and boosts enthusiastic engagement among students studying classic literature that teenagers might otherwise find boring, outdated or dull.

Before teaching “Romeo and Juliet,” Shepherd opens class by discussing teenage love and heartbreak, finding a way to make her students see their own angsty affairs in the one Shakespeare brought to life centuries ago.

For “Lord of the Flies,” Shepherd teaches a preliminary class in which students simulate a crash landing on a deserted island. She tells them to pick a leader and dole out responsibilities – and then watches as the chaos unfolds.

“I think that classical text is definitely fading out,” says Shepherd. “But I do think it still has a place, and that a lot of these themes are more overarching – there’s a reason Shakespeare has lasted so long. These are universal themes that everybody can relate to.”

Shepherd, who teaches AP English at Hesperia High School and has full autonomy in choosing the books she uses in the classroom, is correct in saying that interest in teaching classical text is waning. Many English teachers, bibliophiles in their own right, are starting to prefer a more contemporary, diverse reading list, one they feel represents the students they’re instructing and the world they currently inhabit.

With AP classes specifically though, there’s a Catch-22: Advanced placement classes, which factor heavily when applying to competitive colleges, are taught to prepare kids for the AP test. The AP test relies on student’s being well-versed in the literary canon, much of which is not especially diverse nor contemporary.

When ninth grade teacher Jhenna Wieman is working with her English department to bring newer novels and contemporary authors into the curriculum she says, “Let’s make it somebody who’s not dead and white.”

A ninth-grade English teacher at Citrus Hill High School in Perris, Wieman says that while her district has been progressive in many ways – one of which is making ethnic studies a graduation requirement – the process of bringing new book titles into the fold can be a daunting one, met with pushback.

While ninth graders at Citrus Hill are still reading mostly classics such as “Of Mice and Men,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Romeo and Juliet,” the school’s 10th graders are able to dive into “The Hate You Give.”

“The teacher who got it on the list said, ‘You have no idea what I went through to get them to agree to teach that,’” Wieman says.

“The Hate U Give” is author Angie Thomas’ 2017 debut novel about a teenage girl who witnesses the murder of her best friend at the hands of police. It made the 2020 top 10 most challenged books list, an annual survey by the American Library Association and compiled by the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

The immediate bestseller landed on the list alongside “Of Mice and Men” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” While those classic titles were both challenged for racial slurs and what the Library Association termed “negative effects” on students, “The Hate U Give” was challenged for profanity and a perceived anti-police message.

“I’ve never been for classics, it’s like they’re being held on a pedestal, or [have] some educational value as opposed to more contemporary works,” says Wieman. “The classics don’t foster a love of reading in teenagers. That’s why we want them to read novels – to help them love reading.

“With ‘The Hate U Give,’ you have students who are saying, ‘I normally don’t like reading, and I love reading this book.’ And that’s because it’s a young adult book written for them, written not that long ago, with contemporary themes.”

Kit McConnell teaches seventh grade English at El Sereno Middle School in Los Angeles. One of the classes he’s taken on is an intervention class for kids who are struggling, have lower test scores, and can be disruptive in other classes. ​​

“I think that [social and political] themes are part of the author’s intention when they write a story for a young adult audience, to have them ponder big ideas in relation to the characters they create,” says McConnell.

“I read ‘Hunger Games’ with my intervention class,” he adds. “None of the guys had read very many novels in their life. We had class sets at the school. We read it, we digested it, we talked about it. They asked questions throughout the whole thing.

“And then right around the time we were wrapping up our study, the movie was being released. I figured out a way to take those kids on a field trip to Universal CityWalk. We went there on the opening Friday during the school day. As we were walking out, the kids were like, ‘Mr. McConnell, they ruined it.’ I think they walked away with that appreciation for reading an original written text, as opposed to getting all of your storytelling through visual multimedia.”

McConnell works within the Los Angeles Unified School District, where the teachers have much more autonomy in choosing the literature they teach in their courses, versus in a district such as Val Verde where teachers select titles from an approved list.

According to Lori Hunt, who has been a teacher working in the LAUSD for nearly 20 years, smaller districts seem to have a tighter grasp on curriculum. So, while Citrus Hill High School teachers are fighting for titles like “The Hate U Give,” teachers like McConnell are able to teach “Hunger Games.”

In a school district where teachers have the freedom to choose the books they teach, the students have the opportunity to read literature that more obviously reflects their own lived experiences. With classics, there’s often some translating that needs to be done when identifying parallels and themes.

“Things have changed so much in the last two years, certainly in the last 10 years in education,” says Hunt. “Any educator, any English teacher today is going to understand that – especially an urban educator. I’m going to select titles that reflect my student body. And I’m going to select titles where the protagonist is a person of color, and that have cultural experiences that my students have, so that they can see themselves in the books that I choose.”

Shelby Shepherd is still teaching the classics, but she’s found a way to address the argument for contemporary over classics by following in the footsteps of Mary E. Styslinger, who wrote the book, “Workshopping the Canon.” The idea is to pair a classic text like “Romeo and Juliet” with a contemporary young adult novel like “These Violent Delights” by Chloe Gong – a book that explores the same star-crossed lover theme.

Shepherd also has been looking at teaching “Pride and Prejudice” alongside “Pride” by Ibi Zoboi, a book with an Afro-Latino protagonist who grapples with cultural identity, class, love and gentrification in Brooklyn, New York.

When she doesn’t have a comparable title to teach in tandem with a classic text, Shepherd gets creative, whether it’s a “Frankenstein” mock trial or the bunny project.

“I give them all a piece of paper – it’s got a bunny on it,” says Shepherd when describing how she gears up to teach “Of Mice and Men.” “I have them color their bunny, name their bunny. They do activities with their bunny, they have it every day in class. I make them take their bunny to the mall, walk around the grocery store, take pictures with the bunny.

“They get really attached to this piece of paper, (BEGIN ITALICS) really (END ITALICS) attached. Then right when we start reading ‘Of Mice and Men,’ I tell them okay, now pull your bunnies out and rip them up.”

In “Of Mice and Men,” the protagonist, George, mercifully kills his friend Lennie to save him from the brutal mob killing that would have awaited him otherwise.

“They all get looks of horror on their faces, they don’t want to do it,” says Shepherd. “So, I tell them, either you rip up your bunny or I rip up your bunny. And then you see them slowly rip up their bunnies.”