In the chapters, “Reading with Passion and Purpose” and “YA Literature and Text Complexity,” Beuhler makes a compelling case for the placement of Young Adult Literature at the heart of secondary Language Arts curricula. They outline the pedagogical “binary” that has arisen among English educators, with some educators creating space in their curricula for Young Adult Literature, while others maintain that YA Lit cannot match the Classics in rigor or cultural value. Beuhler illustrates how educators who cling to teaching solely the Classics try to ignore or justify the reality that the bulk of their students are not actually reading these culturally enshrined books at all. Beuhler relates an anecdote in which a school administrator, when asked why teachers should continue teaching Homer’s Odyssey, when students aren’t actually reading the book, opined that the Odyssey should stay in the curriculum because at least students would know about it. Beuhler counters the belief that students benefit more from being goaded into half-reading the Classics than they do from fully engaging with YA texts that speak to their actual life experiences.
To counter the widely espoused notion that YA Lit is less intellectually rigorous than canonical literature, Beuhler examines the Lexile scores of a number of popular YA and canonical titles. Their cursory research reveals the ludicrousness of the claim that YA Lit does not rival classic literature in complexity, as several YA texts scored higher than canonical texts that are widely taught in secondary English classrooms. Beuhler also criticizes teachers’ reliance on Lexile levels as true representations of the complexity of texts, arguing that the frequency of word usage and sentence length are not reliable indicators of text difficulty, as they fail to account for other aspects of complexity, such as emotionally challenging content.
I agree with Beuhler that our students deserve the opportunity to explore YA literature in their English Language Arts classes. As English teachers, we should not continue forcing our students to read only the Classics, resulting in many mildly to moderately enthusiastic student readers losing any motivation to read while the most passionate readers in our classes resign themselves to doing all of their enjoyable reading outside of school. While I certainly believe that there are many canonical texts that still have value for today’s student readers and that students can still enjoy reading, I also believe that there is a wealth of YA literature that lends itself to rigorous analysis. Our students will be best served by a well-balanced diet of Young Adult and classic texts from all genres.
Miss Harrell Reads 