Classic literature still gets assigned in most high school English classes, but I wonder if the time spent on Dickens and Austen is really serving today's students. Last semester, I watched my own niece struggle through 'Great Expectations' while simultaneously devouring complex YA novels that tackled modern social issues with a directness those older works rarely match. Sure, the classics offer historical perspective and masterful prose, but are they the best tool for developing critical reading skills in 2024, or are we just clinging to tradition at the expense of relevance? The debate feels urgent when more students are disengaging from reading altogether, and I'm not convinced that forcing nineteenth-century vocabulary on them is the answer, though I also worry about losing the depth that those texts demand.