It’s time to “decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education,” declares the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Instead, teachers should focus on exploring “Representation and Power through Critical Reading, Listening, and Viewing” of media to help students to become “empowered change agents”

“Ludicrous,” writes Fordham’s Amber M. Northern, who relied on NCTE teaching ideas as a novice English teacher.

NCTE wants to focus on “teaching and learning practices that help to identify and disrupt the inequalities of contemporary life, including structural racism, sexism, consumerism, and economic injustice.”

Teaching students to read and write — not just watch videos — might be a good way to disrupt inequality. (Sadly, if students are well educated, they’ll be able to indulge in consumerism.)

Media skills are important, writes Northern. “But these skills don’t substitute for a strong foundation in reading and writing. They flow from it.”

NCTE wants students “to evaluate the veracity and validity of claims, and to debunk misinformation when necessary.”

However, the goal isn’t to learn how to use evidence to develop or refute a claim, writes Northern. It’s to “deepen sociopolitical consciousness” and spot “how power relationships structure the narratives that surround us.”

That’s one way to read or view. It seems dreary. (Do people who don’t enjoy reading become English teachers?)

Northern remembers how excited her students got debating whether Daisy had ever loved Gatsby and whether George should have shot Lennie in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. (My daughter served as George’s defense counsel in ninth grade and got him acquitted, though, in her heart, she believed he was guilty.)

Both Gatsby and Of Mice and Men are among the books school librarians think should be dropped from summer reading lists in favor of contemporary, “culturally relevant” fiction written for teenagers.