So I’ve been trying to see if high school tries to send us any subliminal messages. Like maybe through its choice in textbooks or endorsement of programs or something.

In order to satisfy my curiosity as well as my penchant desire to expose some depravity in school purposes, I decided to analyze selected required reading from English classes.

Freshman year seemed to be an amalgam of classics; but they seemed to just tickle the surface. Let’s see: To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Odyssey. Messages? Racism and mob mentality are bad; love is good and true and all, unless you’re fourteen and melodramatic; everything is silly; and you can be an arrogant god-like creature, believe it or not. Okay, nothing too racy or macabre. Certainly no dangerous subterfuge in the lit...Disgruntled, I continued my quest.

Ahh...sophomore year. Lord of the Flies? People are bad. Dandelion Wine. Children are great. A Tale of Two Cities. People are bad. Oedipus Rex. Don’t hate on the gods. A Separate Peace. People are bad. Taming of the Shrew. Don’t oppress women (a valuable lesson there). Cry, the Beloved Country. People are bad.

So, the perpetual message tossed at me during sophomore year was to be wary of humankind. Or maybe it was just ridiculing youngsters.

I mean, all of the crazy boys on the island in Lord of the Flies were adolescents, Oedipus Rex featured its fair share of the young and the restless, and Dandelion Wine encouraged us all to take a more child-like, pristine mindset. Lovely. So my sophomore year was a year of ridicule and disdain from the English department.

But this year? Junior year? When we’re all supposed to be significantly more mature and hard-working and earnest? Maybe our levels of perception will be augmented? A Scarlet Letter. Society’s horrid. Huck Finn. Society’s horrid. The Great Gatsby. Society’s horrid...