What literature belongs in today's classroom? 5 L.A. high school teachers weigh in

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Set us as preferred On a recent summer day at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, students ambled through yawns, braces and acne into their creative writing class.The day’s lesson tackled “style,” that elusive, ultra-subjective choice of expression.“Who was the first author you encountered to do something different on the page?” asked the teacher, Clarke E.

Andros.They named Dr.Seuss, Shel Silverstein and Lemony Snicket before moving on to a précis of Joy Williams’ flash fiction.

“These stories are weird — she’s weird,” Andros warned.In some ways, high school looks much the same as it did 20, even 100 years ago: sleepy eyes either light up or glaze over when a teacher poses a Socratic question.Nervous laughs and unexpected insights emerge as young people use stories to make sense of themselves and the world around them.The idea of the “Great American Novel” took shape in the aftermath of the Civil War, when a fractured nation looked to literature to define itself.

As classrooms evolved, so did the canon that reflected America’s changing identity.But the syllabus today is at a tipping point.Forces — some visible, some harder to see — are upending literature and education itself.

American students are in a decade-long reading recession, while fewer students are reading for pleasure than in previous generations.Books A guide to the literary geography of Los Angeles: A comprehensive bookstore map, writers’ meetups, place histories, an author survey, essays and more.Reading scores among high school seniors are at their lowest in decades, according to federal testing data, while schools across the country are grappling with how to respond to waning attention spans and artificial intelligence.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has begun a course correction, voting to limit student use...