Abstract

While a need to have a set of books that are designated for school use nationwide may seem necessary, the implementation of such a list, like the western literary canon, often causes more harm to students’ learning than improvement. The canon’s history is riddled with instances of forcing complex faux “universal” texts into the eyes and the minds of readers. With an increase in the socioeconomic gap across the country, a gap that most definitely is felt among the nation’s school systems, occurrences of reluctant readers are very high. Reluctant readers are students who often lack the necessary skills to read such complex texts as those inserted in the canon. Educators and education policy makers alike should be less concerned with making their students cosmopolitans and more concerned with getting them to be successful readers. Only when the students are successful at “normal” texts will they be able to graduate to higher-level texts that are included in the canon.