Boring books? Will teens love reading if books are 'accessible' (easier)?

Stop assigning those boring classics, a former English teacher advises in Education Week. Leave Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Chaucer and Shakespeare to the English majors, writes Erich May, now a superintendent in Pennsylvania.

"Now more than ever, the priority for high school English teachers should be instilling in students a love of reading — or even just a willingness to read," he writes. Dump complex literature for "accessible" books they can understand without a chatbot summary. May suggests dystopian fiction, such as 1984 , Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, Hemingway's short stories, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye or Stephen King's Carrie.

Screen-loving students can learn to analyze literature and think deeply by reading not-so-classic novels, short stories, poems, song lyrics, screenplays and so on, he writes.

I was struck by his example of a boring book, one I read in high school English. The opening of The Scarlet Letter starts:

A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

Long, convoluted sentences "about old men and prison," writes May. What teen would be interested?

Well, gee, the book is about illicit sex! Hester will wear a scarlet "A" in a world of sad, gray Puritans. And, check out the second paragraph. The first thing Utopia needs is a cemetery and a prison, writes Hawthorne, that sly old dog. That's worth a discussion, isn't it?

May thinks Wuthering Heights is "ugly." Most teenage girls I knew loved the book. (I'm too sensible for Cathy and Heathcliff.) I'd let boys read something else.

Students should read long books, but there are lots of short stories, speeches, poems and essays they should read too, writes Daniel Buck a former English teacher.

I've been rereading collections of stories from my high school and college days. (OK, I was an English major.) There are some great stories. And the ones that predate the mid-20th-century haven't lost their punch.

I think the main reason many students don't read is that they never learned to read fluently in elementary school, and that they're not challenged to read good books -- and stories and poems -- in middle and high school. They get too much that's "relatable" and "relevant" and second-rate.