Firstly, proponents of the current system might note that the purpose of English class is not to entertain students but to teach them how to read. This is, of course, true; but in a time when students have a paucity of reasons to read an assigned book, teachers must select novels with an eye to student interest. Of Mice and Men may be a far better novel than The Hobbit; but if no students read the former, the point is moot. A work that students truly read, and read critically, is a better choice than one for which students immediately print SparkNotes. Moreover, some will argue that students might be even less interested in reading diverse books than in reading tried-and-true selections. Books by minorities that also hold the interest of students are indeed not easy to find; but this task is certainly not impossible. Brown Girl Dreaming, a novel by African-American female author Jaqueline Woodson, has more than 240 five-star reviews on Amazon; and that book is not unique. There are over 130,000,000 books published; and most teachers would need to find only two or three new ones. Additionally, someone in favor of the status quo might posit that a selection of eight diverse books is not necessarily the best selection of eight books. This may be true, but to say that no literarily valuable books by minority authors exist is absurd. At present, no Jesuit class reads Twelve Years a Slave, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, or any Toni Morrison novel (all, notably, selections that at one point were taught at Jesuit). It is certainly possible to pick books that, while not optimally representative, are more diverse than those at present. Finally, questions may arise over the statistics that establish this supposed bias. Yes, 110 is not a large sample size. Yes, it is possible that 2015-2016 is an aberration. However, even
Firstly, proponents of the current system might note that the purpose of English class is not to entertain students but to teach them how to read. This is, of course, true; but in a time when students have a paucity of reasons to read an assigned book, teachers must select novels with an eye to student interest. Of Mice and Men may be a far better novel than The Hobbit; but if no students read the former, the point is moot. A work that students truly read, and read critically, is a better choice than one for which students immediately print SparkNotes. Moreover, some will argue that students might be even less interested in reading diverse books than in reading tried-and-true selections. Books by minorities that also hold the interest of students are indeed not easy to find; but this task is certainly not impossible. Brown Girl Dreaming, a novel by African-American female author Jaqueline Woodson, has more than 240 five-star reviews on Amazon; and that book is not unique. There are over 130,000,000 books published; and most teachers would need to find only two or three new ones. Additionally, someone in favor of the status quo might posit that a selection of eight diverse books is not necessarily the best selection of eight books. This may be true, but to say that no literarily valuable books by minority authors exist is absurd. At present, no Jesuit class reads Twelve Years a Slave, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, or any Toni Morrison novel (all, notably, selections that at one point were taught at Jesuit). It is certainly possible to pick books that, while not optimally representative, are more diverse than those at present. Finally, questions may arise over the statistics that establish this supposed bias. Yes, 110 is not a large sample size. Yes, it is possible that 2015-2016 is an aberration. However, even