This House believes the teaching of literary classics should be compulsory

At a time when there is a common belief that the word as an art for is in decline, a question arises over what is being taught in schools and whether or not the 'classics' - the works which have been canonised by English scholars and are widely recognised to be the best works of art in the English language, are still relevant to the children of the twenty-first century. 'English Literature' as a subject in its own right has only been taught officially since 1828, when University College London began to offer alternatives to the long established curricula at Oxford and Cambridge¹. Since that time, there has been some debate over exactly what should be taught, especially with the formation of a national curriculum in the UK in 1989 which stipulated compulsory teaching of 'English', though not necessarily literature, to GCSE standard². The question also extends beyond what should be taught into how it should be taught and whether or not it will be taught at all in the future. Recent advances in technology and a youth culture that provides so many recreational activities has lead to reports of literature potentially becoming extinct in the future - the implications of this question of compulsory teaching therefore extend beyond the value of individual works and into the realm of the survival of an art form.
¹: Instance of English first being taught (accessed 05/06/11)
²: Information on compulsory GCSE subjects (accessed 05/06/11)