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If you were in charge of setting high school fiction reading curriculums, what books would you choose? I think Dune holds up, maybe Blood Meridian? But I’m not as well read as some of you
I wouldn't think either of those books are really that suitable. Dune is a bit pulpy and is on the fantasy side of sci-fi that uses technological premises to justify cool fights and exotic intrigues. Sci-fi that is more rewarding for in-class exploration focuses more on the social and philosophical aspects, imo. Blood Meridian is just far too bloodthirsty.
An English curriculum's canon wants do a few things (ideally all in the same book):
Introduce readers to culturally 'important' texts without which they would lack important context for a lot of other media
Exhibit technical expression in plot, prose style, tone, characterisation, and other unique devices, etc. that is legible enough to be useful as a tool to discuss these elements and their execution
Provoke the reader to consider broader ideas they may not have considered before
Actually hold a student's interest
Some texts hit on all of these points very well, which is why they're a mainstay in schools: Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Steinbeck's stuff, for example. You can also see the failure modes of some curriculums in trying to pursue one point at the expense of all others (it is easy to imagine someone fixated on the first point wanting to teach 12-year-olds Chaucer or the second point wanting to teach Joyce or Calvino without care for student interest, or conversely erring in the other direction and serving up the shallow YA lit of the day).
I think showing a range of techniques and big ideas is more important in the limited time you have, so my ideal English Curriculum would be heavily weighted towards shorter stories that could be consumed and dissected in a week or even a single lesson. Calvino is a lot more palatable when writing his cosmicomics, for example (the Distance of the Moon is keenly stylistic, heartbreaking, and poses interesting questions about sci-fi as a genre). DFW's Incarnations of Dead Children has a frenetic, heart-in-mouth pacing that deserves close attention (and god forbid you propose 8th graders read Infinite Jest). The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is both an important cultural touchstone and provokes questions that young readers latch onto hard, and it can be consumed in a half-hour. The Yellow Wallpaper, Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, maybe some of Saramago's absurdist stuff would also be on my ideal list.
(The other nice thing about short stories is that I can link to most of these online, and the short length is less intimidating for even adult readers to dive in and get something out of them)
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