What is your opinion about the amount of reading that is, or should be, assigned in high school English classes in the U.S.?

@Tomorrow No, I agree with you.

@Tomorrow How do the English teachers do it, with three and a half months to one semester? Does that mean three and a half complete books for the semester, or seven books per year and nothing else? I agree. I say depth is more important than breadth and besides the kids who get interested in other stuff will read more anyway.

But in my English class we had maybe 14 astounding original things to read and study and much more minor stuff.

Most of us got good grades too. Don't know how it happened. I was a middling student but tried hard and was ashamed I didn't do better but decades later I feel like crying when I think of that teacher. Lord of the Flies Oliver Twist Julius Caesar, Kiss Me Kate, Hamilton's Mythology, The King Must Die, Silas Marner, A Separate Peace, 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the Great Poets of the Romantic era and maybe seven to ten more major works. Many oral English classes and book speeches assigned. Don't know how I did it with all of everything else happening back then.

But I didn't know anything so it was NO golden time 4 me.

@Stilltryinghard Which grade level was this? And was it a semester long or a year long?

@33person That was in 10th grade and it lasted ten months

@Stilltryinghard What were your other years of high school English like? Less intense, or the same?

@33person I never had another class like that in English or anything. But my History teacher in eleventh and twelfth grade was amazing too, she KNEW what creeping fascism was and hinted all over the place about it and now I know how special she was. She was haunted by the flaws and gifts of the Constitution and knew what a scam this north and south thing was in the USA and what Lincoln was really doing.

Also in that English class we wrote about an opera we saw... at the same school. We traveled to NYC to see a Broadway musical and she wanted to take us to the Folger Shakespeare place in Saratoga Springs NY. Didn't happen. A few years ago I tried hard to find her and no trace, no relatives I could contact and no one else. Gone forever. No kids to contact from back then either. Ditto 4 that History teacher

They came like blips in the wind, gave what they had to those who could listen...and disappeared forever.

@Stilltryinghard I think I misunderstood what you meant when you said you thought of crying when you thought of that teacher. I thought you hated doing all that reading.

@33person why... cause I said I was a middling student?

@Stilltryinghard I think so. Did you like the class?

@33person Imagine I'm in a time machine....

All people have had that fantasy.

That's my answer.

There was something in me that knew those two teachers were astoundingly special but now its so clear to me...

@Stilltryinghard I think it was actually because you said it was no golden time for you. That's why I was confused. But looking back, do you think more English teachers could and should have their class do that amount of that kind of reading?

@33person we were supposedly "honors" students and that was hot stuff back then. It was challenging and as I said I could have done better but I was maximally loaded as were we all. And I didn't shine in that class.

I could never do high school today. I would get really angry the first 10 minutes and quit.