I would say the reason schools push the Late, Great, Whiteys is partly as a hold over from older, more conservative days where these *were* good books, and heretics were burned at the stake. However, there is also the idea that students should already be reading stuff themselves by the time they get to the end of high school. Therefore mucking through the craft of and cultural significance of, say, Shakespeare or Faulkner (damn his fish and damn his mother, grrr), comes at a time when students are already at least somewhat versed in literacy and their own preferences are taken care of privately. F'rinstance, much as the events of the Antebellum South may not be of any interest to the high schooler, he should already appreciate something of a historical context about the world at large, or perhaps know something of geography. This is, of course, not terribly true in what people have been bemoaning is becoming an increasingly illiterate age since, well, the 1700's. Or maybe Homer. The problem we face is that students need to be already somewhat versed in literacy by the time they get to late high school. The great downfall of 'new' or 'fun' or 'counter stodgy old farts' methods of teaching is that, at least in my experience of public schools, these helpful, easy-going activities fall into a jungle of student's active dislike of doing anything. Most days start out with the teachers desperately trying to get more than a tenth of their class to actually pay attention, where the larger probability is that students will do whatever they can, to the least amount that they can to get through their classes and go home, so that they can rail against the fact they can't go out on their own. I usually found that out of a thirty student class, maybe 3 people paid attention and actually took things in. I'm being dire, of course, but the truth is that the majority of any one class takes absolutely nothing in, and doesn't want to. Give them the option of choosing their own reading and they will wheedle, like prisoners for cigarettes, for the lowest stress, easiest, most passing grade insuring text that they will likely not read. What needs to happen is that these students need to, for some reason, find it culturally weird to not have, at least, read something or have a literary preference by high school. I think it's good to still teach saavy and complex literature, and 'the greats' (in a vein of cultural significance alongside other, less well known greats) to high schoolers, but the only way to get the horse to water is to try an make him think it's just as viable as Mountain Dew (namely, Xbox). I, of course, think that such a change is possible, but mostly as a fluke of fate or cultural fluctuations.

-Crow