Strongly disagree. I say this as someone who went to a state school and didn’t start reading literature until well after college.
The classics are classics for good reason. Even if one can’t learn to appreciate them, they’re critical for understanding entire epochs of political thought and history. It would be like trying to navigate modern retail politics while ignoring memes.
But as I’m “aging” into the real world after grad school, I’ve similarly realized how silly it was to turn my head to literature.
Curious if you’d be willing to recommend a classic, or share the genres that you’ve been enjoying.
Yes. They reflected the culture of the ruling strata in their contemporary periods. That's why they are classics. The rest of the society (~90%) had no means to do any literature. That's why the classics were out of touch with their own times - which made Dickens such a difference by the way -, and the upper strata that was educated on them up until today are still out of touch with their own societies.
Besides the classics were elite fashion. Like speaking French or fencing. They were a means to distinguish class, with hard to access knowledge and habits. It wasn't because these things were good, it was because the average person could not easily attain access to them.
The great books canon was partly constructed retroactively by people with agendas about what civilization meant. A real collection of classics would have much more folk stories, common herioc figures and fantasies.
While I understand and agree to a certain degree, (and as a person with degree) it still fills me with dread where I work with senior developers who don't have a clue what is complexity of their algorithms or lack basic problem solving skills that a degree would instill in them. People can absolutely learn on the job but degree would still give me an idea of what I can expect from given person.
As a side note, LLMs are an equalizer that makes degrees less relevant when near keyboard; still, I want to talk to people that understand the concepts they're operating with when afk
Reading a canonical set of old stories gives you shared experience with readers across continents and centuries and civilizations and class and complexion. It's not inclusive of everybody, but its a broader than just the "affluent in-group" it might currently include.