Here's an interesting article about how schools in the Seattle area are rethinking what they ask students to read:
Schools' reading lists get a rewrite
By Lynn Thompson [Seattle] Times Snohomish County BureauJoel Villasano speaks with pride about reading Shakespeare's "Hamlet" earlier this year.
The Elizabethan prose was dense and often incomprehensible, but there were great insults and sword fights. And once he had worked his way through the play, Villasano said, he felt a huge sense of accomplishment.
But the Mariner High School senior really lights up when he talks about another book his English class read this year: "Life of Pi," a story of a 14-year-old Indian zookeeper's son stranded on a life raft with a Bengal tiger. The book, published in 2001, is a harrowing high-seas adventure and a meditation on faith by a boy who loves God so much that he practices Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.
"Is it an animal story or a human story?" Villasano asks. "Is it about the survival of just the most powerful predators? Is one religion better than all the others?"
Villasano, who didn't speak English until his family came to the United States when he was 8, and who didn't like books much when he entered high school, poses these questions like a seasoned reader, his voice animated with curiosity and awe.
Largely in response to their more ethnically diverse student bodies, high schools in the area are broadening their literature selections to include more contemporary writers, more women and more minorities.
Students say the books engage them more immediately than the classics yet still raise timeless questions about existence and meaning.
Read the rest here.
