Jack Reacher should be taught in schools

[noblegiraffe]

Lee Child, the famous and prolific author of thrillers has been doing literacy workshops with prisoners based around his Jack Reacher novels.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/dec/19/lee-child-thrillers-uk-school-curriculum-literacy

He suggests that teaching children literary masterpieces is putting children off reading. "He said: “You should have whatever is compelling and whatever gets people into the habit of reading. Then you can have the fancy stuff later, of course, but don’t start with it.”"

I mean, he has a point, there is a crisis in reading among young people, particularly boys (65.5% of boys got a 4+ in English in the summer compared to 75.9% of girls and we know that being a reader improves outcomes across all GCSEs).

• "Just 1 in 3 (34.6%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they enjoyed reading in their free time in 2024. Reading enjoyment levels have decreased by 8.8 percentage points over the past year alone.

https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/children-and-young-peoples-reading-in-2024/

But I'm not sure what to do with this - Lee Child is finding that male prisoners are engaging with Jack Reacher in prison when there's not much else going on for them, would those same young men have engaged with it at school? On the other hand, his books are certainly more engaging than Of Mice and Men.

I loved English Lit at school. It was my best subject and I loved All Quiet On the Western Front, Of Mice and Men, Shakespeare - not all the texts but most of them had some artistic merit that I could appreciate. I don't think it would be fair to make literature loving pupils read pop lit dross - what can you actually learn from thrillers? I enjoy thrillers, detective novels, etc and am definitely not against reading for pure entertainment but it's like eating a bag of sweets versus a well cooked nutritious meal.

I had to do actual maths rather than sudoku puzzles even though I didn't like that and I honestly don't think it matters if some pupils don't have the temperament to relish every single aspect of the curriculum. We all have different strengths and interests.

The classics may be better written but reading for pleasure is plummeting so maybe something else is needed.

It's subjective how well written a classic may be. Our book club had to read an American book called The Chateau written just after WW2 ended, about a young American couple spending an extended honeymoon in France. It won awards and unilaterally, the eight of us said it was the most boring book we'd ever had to read!

However reading for pleasure feeds into all aspects of the curriculum.

Doing sudoku isn't anywhere nearly as important.

Yes, but its impossible to generalise another person's pleasure from one's own.

I still teach girls who love Austen and look crestfallen when I say I hate her books.

Equally you might love Of Mice and Men while other think it is tedious as hell.

But certainly Mr Child's novels seem to have a wide audience. Popular fiction is popular.

I agree, but by the same token, existing games/pe is often poorly taught too, so that the kids who'd benefit from exercise don't get it because they're turned off if they can't do it due to being overweight, bullied, or whatever. I think we need a lot more different ways of teaching all aspects of school curriculum really as the "one size fits all" really doesn't and there needs to be far broader varieties of all aspects really so pupils can find something they can engage with, whether it be reading, sports, numeracy, arts or whatever.

I think what this thread shows is that everyone has different tastes... some kids love some books and hate others; we can all recall reading books at school that we either hated or loved. So, its not necessarily a question of what is taught but how, as many contributors have said.

Similarly with PE for exercise they might have more success with getting the recalcitrant kids to do Dance Dance Revolution or trampolining rather than rugby or netball.

I did Peter Schaffer's Equus at A-level - now there's a book that actually seems like it was written to be analysed! It was brilliant.

At DS's school they're doing all war texts I think which seems very tedious to me, but i guess there's a reason.

I think one of the problems with the books that students are presented with at school being necessarily ones with 'themes' and 'great writing' that lend themselves to being taught, is that students might not actually realise that there are books out there that they might enjoy because they're simply funny, or exciting.

I was on about Jack Reacher the character in the series 🤣.....the visual concept rather than the storyline....

Now there's a thought. I remember all the girls being engaged with reading The Outsiders at school because the book had a photo from the film on the front. Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez...

Yes, and the place for those is in their own reading. I think there is a confusion in this thread between what is taught in English lessons and reading. We teach English language and literature at secondary school, exploring texts critically and anyaltically; reading is a whole school issue and also of course a responsibility of home/ parents.

And the point is that they're not doing their own reading.

But my point is English lessons are not the main venue to address this.

So perhaps have compulsory “reading periods” and let kids drop English Literature at GCSE if they want?

We all enjoyed the Leo DiCaprio version of Romep and Juliet.

Maybe that's what they need to do with all the texts... well known actors making TV film versions.

We have a compulsory reading lesson once a week. It does nothing for kids who don't like to read.

The decision on eng lit at gcse is a government level one. And in my experience, kids enjoy english literature -they do well at it, too, at my school - looking at residuals, it's often their highest grade across gcse subjects. I think the issue with a thread like this is everyone is coming at it with their own specific experience (I loved this, my DD hates that, reading thrillers will engage kids, no they won't etc) and trying to look at the bigger picture is difficult, maybe.

It would help some DC if GCSE English Literature and GCSE English Language were tiered, IMO.

English Lit is the subject I would say is most hated and found most stressful by a lot of our kids with SEN.

I think a lot of them would benefit much more from having extra Eng Lang (and maths) lessons tbh.

Harsh. Sudoku develops logical reasoning, pattern recognition, spatial reasoning and a lot of things that are useful for mathematical, scientific and technological skills.

And looking at the way maths trails behind English attainment, anything that helps kids not freak out when faced with numbers has to be a good thing.

What do you mean maths trails behind? The 4+ GCSE rate for Y11 last summer was 70.6% for English and 71.9% for maths.

General levels of attainment - the majority of students attain lower in maths/numeracy/quantitative reasoning tests than they do in English/Literacy/Reading/GPS throughout their education. The notable exceptions apply where they are new to or at the early acquisition stages of English as an additional language, a small proportion who are truly gifted or have particular difficulties with processing language.

Comparing pass rates isn't appropriate in this case, as it's the individuals' English vs Maths grades. It's why functional skills education at post 15 is more about teaching them to decode the questions in order to apply the techniques, as there's no way to answer a question if they can't understand what it's asking for.