Literature Disagreement

Should we require all students to read the same literary classics?

3 reading minutes

written by Pablo Sánchez · November 10, 2026 · 0 comment

Should all students be required to read the same literary classics?

Antoine Lévêque and Marianne Grosjean

In Switzerland, teachers are free to choose which works to study. As a result, students do not necessarily encounter the same texts from one class to the next. Should this be addressed?

Antoine Lévêque

Writer at the Regard Libre

Yes. Requiring students to read common classics in schools is an anti-elitist measure whose effects are also positive for the development of our collective identity. Such a shift in teaching practices would ensure that everyone has a minimum level of cultural knowledge. It is clear that the current model pushes some teachers in schools located in less affluent areas to significantly lower the academic standards of the courses they teach. Students who bear the brunt of this substandard education consequently fall significantly behind their peers. Yet the intellectual depth of the writings by our greatest literary figures allows those who can draw upon them to enjoy greater social recognition, the value of which is confirmed in various aspects of social life. Furthermore, a teacher who limits themselves to having their students read «simple» authors would deny them access to writers whose style and mastery of narrative could have helped them discover unexpected joys. Establishing a common curriculum for the classics would also help promote authors who are rarely read but whose cultural significance we believe should be highlighted. This is true of most of our local writers, who are unknown to the general public even though they have contributed—or continue to contribute today—to the high quality of the literary scene in French-speaking Switzerland.

Marianne Grosjean

Journalist

No. From middle school, I remember my French teachers. You could sense their personal preferences for certain authors: I remember the excitement of one teacher comparing the made-up words from the Fables of Humpur by Pierre Bordage on the Occitan language, an unexpected bridge to the medieval period he was supposed to introduce us to. Another, seeking to appeal to our intense teenage emotions, focused on works and authors that perfectly capture them. Whether it was the sensual discovery of The Lover, the ambition with *The Red and the Black*, the mystical initiation with The Eagle's Seven Feathers Or the fruitful need for solitude, as expressed by Arthur Rimbaud with his phrase «to hell with beer.» Their calling took on meaning when they introduced students to a book they adored, and it was no longer just about graded general knowledge. Something more was being passed on in the classroom: an intimacy between souls, an intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional exchange that reading that particular book—highlighted by that particular teacher—evoked in a unique way. And the sense that beauty was essential to life. In those moments, the teacher became a mentor, a guide, an inspirer. Their mission—so noble—went beyond their job description. A teacher forced to teach the same books year after year, with no freedom to choose the curriculum, will never go beyond their role. The profession will become more mundane, and I predict that such teachers’ students will never understand the purpose of literature. In the age of artificial intelligence, undermining that extra spark of inspiration that teachers can convey strikes me as a miscalculation for the future of humanity.

Every month, our editor-in-chief Pablo Sánchez brings together two personalities at odds with each other, whether or not they are members of the editorial team. Regard Libre.