I'm not sure that "read anything you want" is an especially effective approach to teaching literature, although a bit of that is probably ok to make sure they're reading something. But my memory is that when I was growing up a lot of the books seemed to be taught at the wrong time, with an emphasis on older very difficult to relate to books earlier in high school and then a bit of more contemporary things perhaps by the end. It isn't that the books were too hard, it's that they were often a bit too from another place.
Educators, chime in...
