In my opinion, keeping classic school novels in school curriculum is not "readicide". Reading stories written by the likes of Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald can be very beneficial for every student or person alike. However, I do think the fact that schools do not include more modern novels or texts when planning out classes can be somewhat harmful.
Students learn better when they relate to things, and a senior in high school could have a pretty hard time relating to the characters from Hamlet. However, you tell a student buy a copy of The Hunger Games, a book with mature themes and concepts that can definitely be analyzed in an English class AND one that was written within this decade, they will probably be more willing and excited to read.
I don’t think that the classics should be completely eliminated from school lesson plans though. They may be older novels, but the ideas behind them and the lessons they teach you can be universal for all ages and times. I mean I personally got a TON out of reading The Catcher in the Rye, even though it was written several years before I was born.
It’s important that not only schools, but students as well recognize the benefits to include modern and classic text within their current curriculum. As the years go by writing styles change, history is being made, and people’s outlooks on the world are completely different than those of the past. It’s important to see that change, and compare it to how it was different decades and centuries ago. Writing and reading will never go out of style, so it’s silly to think that past novels will ever be killing themselves off because people always read them. I mean, if they were worthy in the past, whose to say they won’t be in the present and future?
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