Loving classic school books isn’t cringe… and as an English student, I’m here to defend that take.
“Why do we still read the same classics in school? What do books like Of Mice and Men or Gatsby still offer us today?”
There’s a certain kind of virtual sneer that appears when someone says their favourite book is classics like The Great Gatsby or Of Mice and Men. The assumption? If you read it for school, it must be basic.
But that logic doesn’t hold. If school-assigned classic books are truly tired and irrelevant, why are they still being banned in classrooms across the United States? Why do they continue to spark debate, and in some cases, discomfort?
The truth is, required reading was never just about getting through a syllabus. It was often our first real lesson in ambiguity, close reading, and careful argument. Books we read in school didn’t limit our thinking. Rather, they taught us how to think.
How Required Reading Shaped Our Love of Books
Let’s be honest: most of us were introduced to classic literature not through TikTok or indie bookstores, but from a pile of photocopied texts passed around in English class.
These school books might have been “assigned”, but that doesn’t make them less valid. Dismissing them because they came with a lesson plan is more performance than argument.
Mocking someone for loving a required text is, at best, aesthetic elitism, and at worst, anti-intellectualism disguised as taste.
What About the Canon? Its Baggage and Its Brilliance
It’s true that the literary canon in many Western classrooms has historically centred white, male, European voices. That exclusion isn’t just in the past: it’s structural. And yes, it’s still evolving.
But modern reading lists are changing. It’s now common to see The Bluest Eye, Persepolis, and Purple Hibiscus taught alongside Romeo and Juliet or 1984. Teachers are diversifying what’s taught and how it’s taught.
Even the so-called “old-school” texts stick around because they still raise questions we haven’t stopped asking about justice, identity, morality, and power.
School Reading Is Shared Experience, Not Basic Taste
When I first read Macbeth in Year 10, I didn’t fully understand the witches or the blood-soaked monologues. But the language stayed with me. So did the creeping sense of guilt and ambition.
That’s what makes school reading powerful… you don’t always realise what it gave you until years later.
We all know what it’s like to annotate An Inspector Calls or decode the green light in Gatsby. These books become a cultural shorthand. They mark the beginning of something, not the limit of it.
Reading Isn’t a Competition, And Obscurity Isn’t Depth
Online culture often rewards novelty. The more niche your bookshelf, the more “serious” your taste seems. But here’s the thing: reading obscure books doesn’t make you a better reader. It just means fewer people know your references.
There’s nothing unoriginal about loving Jane Eyre or 1984. What matters is how you engage with a classic, not whether it’s been on an exam.
The Slow Power of Assigned Reading
Required reading teaches us how to read slowly and with others. It’s structured. Pause. Underline. Talk. Think again.
That pace is rare in the age of scrolling and viral book hauls. Academic reading encourages reflection, argument, and attention. It teaches us how to dwell in complexity and how to defend our views.
Those are skills that stick, no matter what career you end up in.
If School Books Are Irrelevant… Why Are They Still Being Banned?
Here’s the irony: the classic books people dismiss as outdated are the ones still being pulled from U.S. classrooms.
Classics like Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Of Mice and Men aren’t being removed because they’re irrelevant. Rather, they’re being banned because they’re too powerful. Too honest. Too unsettling.
Censorship is rarely about boredom. It’s about fear. And what gets banned says more than what gets praised.
Where Reading Begins, And Why That Matters
This isn’t a defence of the canon as it was. It’s a defence of where reading begins. For many of us, it began with a school text, a tough paragraph, a classroom discussion that stayed with us.
We don’t all start with rare first editions. We start with a teacher, a worksheet, and a scene that won’t stop echoing weeks later.
So yes, Lord of the Flies is still my favourite classic. I read it in school. I’ve read it five times since.
If that makes me cringe, so be it. Loving your school books isn’t a crime.
