Matched by Ally Condy

I’ve been reading this book, and it’s really making me angry. It’s a young adult sci-fi novel about a utopia/dystopian society in which those in control (“the Society”) decided that society was over-stimulated by all of the fine arts creations in the world. So they took all of the songs that had ever been written and sifted through them and selected the 100 songs they thought were the best, the most relevant, the most worthy, the most important for society to hear… and destroyed the rest. Then they did the same with books, poems, works of art (paintings, drawings, sketches), sculptures, pieces of classical music, etc. Society then moved forward using only the “100 Best” of each type of fine art creation. The "100 Best" were taught and studied, and all others were forbidden.

When I read this, I was surprised by my own angry reaction to it. I think I was reacting to two parts – first, that a group of people would presume to decide for the rest of the world what constitutes the “best” of the last several hundred years, and second, that it leaves no room for future generations to create new and innovative works of fine art. This, naturally, led me to think about all of the different books people write – and, because I’m an English teacher, about the books that teachers use in class. We’ve been examining the new Common Core Curriculum Standards that will govern what we teach next year, and, as it does every year, the conversation about standards brought up the always-touchy topic of what books we’ll teach our students. There’s almost a “Society”-style group of books of which English teachers approve, and heaven help you if you choose something more unworthy.

This year, our library received an unprecedented grant for purchasing books for the library collection and for our curriculum use. We were asked to turn in wish lists by our library media specialist, who then ordered everything – EVERYTHING – we wanted using the money from this grant. We have new titles for the library and new book sets, both fiction and nonfiction. And yet… as I sat in my department meeting listening to my colleagues talk about which books they will be using next year, there were only two of us in the room who were even interested in using the new materials. Every other teacher at the meeting talked about using the same books they’ve always used.

In my colleagues’ defense, I know they don’t mean to be censoring other books. I know that they choose the same novels because these books are worthy and because the teachers know how the books fit the standards and what great stuff they can find in the books to help their students master the standards. Personally, though, I always agonize over which books to choose for a year. If I choose this one, what am I leaving out? What will my students miss out on because of the book choices I made? Is it really responsible for teachers to simply use the same books over and over, year after year? And who are we to decide that these are the “best” books for our students?