Absolutely, I agree.
There is so much great stuff out there that the chances a kid is going to find *something* interesting is much improved.
One of my best experiences in high school was my very last English class, which I took as an elective. Usually I just hated anything that wasn't science or math. But this was very different. First day of class we were given six pages, comprised of three lists of book titles of two pages each. Books from the second list were somehow (subjectively) classified as harder books than those in the first list. The third harder than the first two. Our assignment was to read two books from each list. You could start at the second or third list, but you couldn't go back to an easier list if you did that. If you wanted to read a book that wasn't on any of the lists, you could bring it in and the teacher told you on which list you could substitute it.
Most classes that didn't have to do with math or science just plain sucked. Since we moved around a bit (dad was in the army), I ended up reading Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar three times each. This class was different. It was called Honors Reading and I've always wondered why it wasn't available to nearly everyone. At the very least, things should be turned around. If we force people to read things, it should be in, say, the last two years. In, say, the K-10 years, there should be a lot of choice.
BTW, one of my picks was The Hobbit (forget which list it was on). A guy I really respected recommended it to me back in the 8th grade up in AK. I had tried to read it a few times and just couldn't get into it. Finally, with this course, I read the whole thing and loved it. After school, I immediately read LOTR and The Similarillion, which were the last books I read before leaving home. (I also read Catch 22 and Hiroshima in that class. And maybe White Lotus. I don't recall exactly. It was a long time ago.)
Anyway, it's true there will be some parents who will be pissed off at everything. But if we open things up, I think we'll find that kids are much more interested in reading than even they believe themselves to be. I didn't get near as much of the classics as I now wish I should have as a kid, but this one course (and another fortuitous event) made them seem much more accessible to me.
Soon after this course, I went to live with my teacher aunt for a few months. And that's where I completely changed my mind about the classics. (I recently wrote a letter to her friend to read at my aunt's 70th birthday party, thanking her for the experiences she gave me more than two decades ago. I think I was supposed to roast her, but I just couldn't do it.)
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