And then there was that second issue I was angry about.

I noticed a number of posts on another board, where high school kids often ask for homework help, asking for help understanding their assigned reading. It seemed they almost never asked for help understanding MacBeth's motivations. Nothing about Hamlet's ambivalence. Nothing about Jane Austen's sarcasm and social satire. The questions this Fall semester seemed to center almost exclusively on three titles: The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and Catcher in the Rye, to Kill a Mockingbird.

I'll grant that these are fine titles, not particularly bad to assign for reading; but why must the assigned books be these books so often? I was annoyed, so I asked the forum if the teachers couldn't think of anything else to assign, expecting the teachers to see, or the students to state that there were other options they'd enjoy.

Well, the first few posts came from student who agreed that yes, they had been assigned little else, some of them admitting they had been assigned the same book two or three times, and yes, wouldn't it be nice if they got something else? (No other titles were suggested, though.)

Then the teachers caught the thread. I expected their anger; one might even say I provoked them by asking the question in a way that would challenge them to defend their narrow choices.

The first few began with, "It's not as simple as you're making it out to be." Not quite, I hadn't "made it out to be" anything. I had simply asked a question. It's not so simple, they said; teachers are given a list of permissible books, one probably made up at the state level by some committee on education.

So were they going to claim that the list has only four books on it? Of course they're not, but this still doesn't answer the question of why the same few titles are assigned over and over and over.

I had suggested there was a need for kids to read the classics as well, as other kinds of reading will expand their horizons; and I said that I considered a book like "Catcher in the Rye", since it's all about being an alienated teenager, to be nothing but an exercise in navel-gazing.

I was belittled for suggesting that horizons should be expanded. What in the world is wrong with thinking the students' horizons should be expanded? Why sit in school all those years?

The last one raged at me, "What do you want them to assign, Stephanie Meyer? Yuk!"

*blink, blink* Where in the world did that come from?

I have seen worse argumentation. In fact I see worse argumentation all the time. But you'd think that someone who prides himself on being an academic would have more pride than that. And please note that not one person addressed my question, other than to belittle me for asking it.

I hope the people responding to that question are proud of themselves.