Is it important to teach Young Adult dystopian fiction in school?

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 Is it important to teach Young Adult (YA) dystopian fiction in school?

 

·      Why is/isn’t it important for these books to be taught?

·      What are some of the popular/important YA dystopian books that should be considered for school curriculum?

·      What are some YA books that have dystopian elements to them, but do not fall strictly under the dystopian genre?

·      Why are these books so popular?

·      Several popular YA dystopian books have been made into feature films. How could these movies be used in the classroom to help improve lessons? 

·      How can these books be used to help students’ asses and better understand the world today?

·      What are some characteristics/qualities that are present throughout books in the YA dystopian genre?

·      Are there any YA dystopian series that can be used to teach a semester/year-long lesson?

·      Are there some YA dystopian books that are better than others when it comes to selecting what to use in the classroom? If yes, what are some of the ‘better books’?

·      Why are more YA dystopian books not being taught in schools already?

 

Considering I’ve read widely in this genre, I don’t think I know much about how important it is to teach dystopian books in school. I have my own opinion on these books, like many other people do, but I’ve never sought out research as to why dystopian books should or should not be taught in school.

 

I selected this topic for several reasons. The first, I love this genre. I think there is a stigma around books when people learn they are for Young Adults, and that because they are intended for a younger audience they become less significant in the eyes of someone who does not understand why YA books are so important, and how, in many ways, they are so much better than adults books. Because of this stigma, I think Young Adult books are an untapped resource that schools across the country and the world are missing out on.

 

There are several incredible books that are related to this topic. I’m sure the first one that comes to most people’s mind is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. But there are so many more: Verify and The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau, Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, Legend by Marie Lu, Scythe by Neal Shusterman, and many more.

 

In conjunction with the above mentioned books, I will use articles from databases that discuss other popular YA dystopian books, how some of them can be used to teach lessons about social justice, as well as other articles that discuss how some of the events that occur in YA dystopian books are not only fiction.

 

My preliminary claim is that it is important for these books to be taught in schools they can be used to teach important, relevant lessons, that students will find them more entertaining than some of the books currently taught in schools.

Comments

  1. Chelsea KNovember 9, 2020 at 10:24 AM

    “Are there some YA dystopian books that are better than others when it comes to selecting what to use in the classroom? If yes, what are some of the ‘better books’?”

    So I actually took an entire Utopian/Dystopian (funny how those can be interchangeable depending on the person) fiction class at my last college. While I remember really enjoying the course and it’s texts as a collective, one title in particular has stuck with me. "Herland," in case you haven’t read it, imagines a society with no men. Their civilization is discovered by a group of male explorers and the events that unfold provide a perfect foil for our own society. This is the value and importance, at least as far as I’m concerned, of teaching dystopian fiction. It allows us to evaluate aspects of our society from different perspectives, almost like a third party observer.
    Now, this is important to me as an educator because I firmly believe that the purpose of education (particularly the study of literature and history) is to prepare the next generation for participation in a democratic society. Being able to look out our own socio-cultural shortcomings is essential to that aim. Dystopian fiction allows us to give our students the opportunity to think about and evaluate the ways in which our society can be improved. Or, at the very least, identify ways in which society doesn’t work or is unjust.
    While I thoroughly enjoyed "Herland" it might prove a bit advanced for any grade level below 12 because it's a bit dated. But I remember last semester you had compiled a pretty fantastic list pairing older texts with newer works of fiction as a way to integrate teaching the old with the new. Personally, I think "Herland" would make a great textual candidate for one of your out-of-the-box pairings.

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