Eight books that all high schoolers should read.
The New York Times recently asked a group of writers what books they’d add to the high school curriculum if given the chance.
The Times editors didn’t ask me this question — probably misplaced my phone number and email address, poor souls. Yet because it’s such a delicious question, the kind of question it’s fun to linger over, I’m going to answer it anyway.
My list of required reading would begin with John Milton’s Areopagitica and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. These Johns are so male. So white. And so dead. But so what? There’s little point to making book lists if we don’t instil in future generations the instinct and desire to protect the expression that books convey.
I know that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is already used for this purpose at many high schools, and it’s an excellent opener. But given that judging and censoring what others say has practically become a competitive sport, it would be helpful if students had access to the dead Johns’ logical arguments for letting speech stand, even when it’s bad or wrong. Actually, especially when it’s bad or wrong.
Next on the agenda would be Stephen King’s On Writing to help ensure that whatever does get expressed in future books, articles and essays is at least comprehensible and if we’re lucky, maybe beautiful. In my high school, we were assigned novelist Stephen Minot’s works on creative writing. At university, we read John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. Both were helpful but seemed dated even at that time, which was in the previous millennium. King’s simple, elegant book of writing advice is newer (if not new) but more importantly, it’s timeless. I can imagine it stirring up laughter and inspiration in future writers even decades from now, and certainly in current high school students who are still reading and watching King’s own creative work.
It would also be a good idea to have students read The Wright Brothers by David McCullough, a biographical history of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Kids may or may not absorb the scientific, technological and sociological significance of the Wrights’ invention. But McCullough’s book will almost certainly impress upon them the Wrights’ personal humility, resilience, diligence and curiosity — qualities that are frequently talked about but don’t make sense until you see an example of them being lived. More effective than giving out “imagination” and “respect” awards at an assembly.
Then it would be time to send the students home with Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team and a Dream, H.G. Bissinger’s non-fiction account of a small Texas town obsessed with high school football. For better or worse, the book is not as soap-opera-like as the lovable fictional television series that followed it. Yet it’s gripping, real, and one of the least condescending ways I can think of to get teenagers to reflect on the realities of racism and sexism and all the other swell stuff they have to deal with as almost-adults. Just think of it as an after-school special with subtlety and brains.
In spite of the fact that they might still be depressed from Friday Night Lights, I’d next hit the kids (at least those in the older grades) with Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. It’s the grim biography of Christopher McCandless, a young man who was eventually found dead in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness, after two years of hitchhiking and adventuring and soul-searching. Was he a brave and sensitive outsider or a narcissistic and naïve kid? Truth is, most teenagers can relate to both, and it will do them good to see that there’s nothing simple about the mystery of who any of us really is.
Unless and until we get a Canadian version that swaps out the U.S. terms, The Index Card: Why Personal Advice Doesn’t Have to be Complicated would be my final mandatory read for high-schoolers. It’s a simple, sensible, universal guide to personal finance.
We do a terrible job of preparing kids for handling their money, even though it’s one of the most important things they’ll ever have to do, regardless of their financial position. We owe them at least a sound grounding in financial literacy before we send them out on their own. There would be much to be gained if students just understood the book’s very basic recommendations (so few that they fit on an index card), even if none of the advice was ever followed.
With these books under their belt, our high schoolers would be better prepared for finding their place in the world.
THERE’S NOTHING SIMPLE ABOUT THE MYSTERY OF WHO ANY OF US REALLY IS.