High School English...

Well, while I was in high school we read a good range of English Lit from all eras.

Most of the “classic” novels aren’t controversial in nature and parents don’t get too terribly angry when they find out their children are reading Romeo and Juliet, however many parents get insanely outraged at the idea of their children reading Harry Potter.

Yes, many of the classics you read are fantastic stories. . .I don’t think you can find anything in modern literature to parallel the tone of these novels. . .a Jane Austen novel will always be a classic story of lovers torn apart. . .and many of the genres of the past are no longer really “alive” today.

Petition school boards for new curriculum. . .your teachers don’t get to make the choice most of the time.

If they are modern English books that are accurate concerning grammar and syntax, than I see no problem with adding newer books. I think that the main reason that they don’t do that is because of the budget. At my high school they used to ship the books from class to class and they’d been using them for at least 10 years.

I’m sorry that they are turning you off from English and reading. They are quite fun if you can get into them and reading makes you speak and write better too! I do agree with you though, many of those books are not relevant to the modern day student.

They do it because old books are the basis of the english language. All modern english language are derived from the techniques used by old english writers such as shakespeare.