7th grader melts down over English teacher making him read a book of his choice and write an essay every month: 'This is Honors English in 2025'

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Sep 10, 2025 8:00 AM EDT

Let's be honest…we don't always have the best memory regarding when we hit certain academic milestones. I remember around the time I learned specific topics (multiplication tables were in 3rd grade, the names of bones were in 6th grade, and algebra was in 8th grade). Still, many details about when I began writing five-paragraph essays and how thorough science experiments were in 9th grade versus 12th grade escape me.

That can be tough when evaluating our kids or our younger siblings and the academic rigor of their institutions. If a kid were to tell me that they had to read six books a semester in their 7th-grade literature class, I would think they were in a much more rigorous 7th-grade English class than I took. When I was in school, the teacher's focus was heavily on preparing students for standardized tests rather than exploring the literary canon. But then again, I'm not in middle school classrooms today. It's difficult to ascertain whether their academic environment is more or less rigorous than the one I grew up with simply by word of mouth. It's easy to be an old foagie complaining about how kids these days don't work as hard as we once did, but is that really accurate?

The parents in this story are those foagies, but they might have a good point. A dad posted about his son complaining about having to read one book and write one essay per month in his 7th grade honors English class. A lot of people claim they did more work when they were younger.
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