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Choosing an alternative is more difficult than it seems. Most of us can easily come up with books that we wish had been assigned at school, or that we think are of such value that students would benefit in some way from reading them.

Deciding whether such titles are suitable for assignment to secondary school students is another and more difficult task, one that I am not well qualified to undertake because I am not a high school teacher by profession.

Nevertheless I would guess that one important consideration is a books’s teachability. What makes a book teachable probably depends not only on the nature of the text itself, but also on the availability to the literature teacher of critical literature and pedagogical materials. I would imagine that “Of Mice and Men” is highly teachable on both counts. The text is short and the language relatively simple, making reading the book a feasible assignment for less academic students, while I am fairly sure there are shelves full of material that will help teachers and students with literary analysis of the work.

However, considerations of race and gender can also determine readability, as this piece from a teacher in Oregon demonstrates:

#OfMiceAndMen #RaisinInTheSun #EnglishTeaching #AmericanLiterature

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/of-mice-and-marginalization/