… Sightings: Educating America - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
These are all good choices. But the choosing is the thing. When I was in high school, I read Will Durant's The Story of Philosopophy and quite a lot of his The Story of Civilization. I liked history. That's when I first read Herodotus. But when I has to read The Return of the Native as a class assignment, I found it rough going and Pride and Prejudice seemed well-nigh incomprehensible. I would never become a Janeite, in fact, but when read Hardy's novel in college, I loved it. I was ready for it by then. Let the girls read Jane and give the boys The Red Badge of Courage.
The problem with designing prescriptive curricula for middle school and high school students is that the designers -- having completed college and having moved on in years -- have forgotten that adolescent readers have learning needs and interests that are different than those of older readers. This means the designers most often make choices based upon what they read and liked as college students and older readers. Those choices can be mistakes for younger readers. But, hey, that is just one old codger's opinion.
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