Not many kids leave high school thanking their English teacher for exposing them to classic literature, whether it's American or otherwise. Oftentimes, adults consider some of the most beautifully written words in the English language to be boring, and something they were forced to read in high school. So are the literature lovers that are out there today just the ones that happened to be born that way, or are they made? In other words, are we turning students off to classic literature?

I am currently a high school English teacher, I know that reading classic texts is not my students' favorite thing to do, and I can't blame them. Teens and tweens find it torturous to study a novel because it's boring and the teacher always finds some deeper meaning that they never would have come up with and doesn't make sense. When I think back to being in high school, I remember feeling the same way, but the weirdest part is, I became an English teacher. I truly enjoy writing, which was my main motivation for studying English in college, but I started to realize that the literature classes that were part of my program opened my eyes. I found a new appreciation for classic texts I would have never thought were valuable before. I think the biggest change is that I started to understand all of that deeper-meaning business because I had matured and seen more of life.

I know a lot of people who don't place a lot of emphasis on the importance of classic literature, but since I've been there and back, I don't think that's their fault. I have a theory that people grow up without an appreciation for literature because we expose them to it too early. The best texts are often those that have strong, serious messages that are artfully crafted and require a certain amount of interpretation to fully grasp. An average 11th grader hasn't experienced enough for classic literature to have a resounding impact on them, and make them understand the value of the words. As a result, the students graduate resenting literature for the nuisance it was in school. We’ve lost ‘em; they won’t pick up another classic text now.

I keep this in mind now whenever I am teaching literature to my students. I tell them straight up: it's hard. Literature analysis is a subject that's difficult to teach and difficult to learn. My mission is to make the text as accessible to them as possible because I’ve been there. And I understand that everyone is well meaning in including classic novels in high school curriculum, but it’s counter productive. We want the students to understand and appreciate the literature, but to some degree, they can’t, and you only get one first impression.

So how do we still have people that dedicate their lives to the study of these classic works? And is literature so special if the larger portion of our population doesn't show too much of an appreciation for it? I think that the answers to these comes back to the fact that most people tend to have a bad taste in their mouth about the literary canon, but book lovers and educators are here to keep the texts alive. There is a population that understands classic literature is special, but the rest of the population, the larger portion, never had a chance to.