I was shocked to learn in one of my English 12 classes that before I could teach Milton's sonnets that I first had to explain his Biblical references, the Biblical parables, and metaphors.
Cavalier poetry was a breeze for them, however! Raging hormones stimulated their spirited discussions about female beauty being short lived ("Gather ye rosebuds...") Lol
The year before I retired the NC School Board was requiring that English teachers get on board teaching literature from "diverse" sources.....had nothing but mimeographed copies of the stories, which in my opinion had nothing of literary merit to recommend them but that their authors were from obscure African and Mideastern countries.
While I am all for broadening students' minds, I do think that they first should be exposed to their own culture and literature before venturing into the one worldism seeping into our schools.
'Guess I'm just a dinosaur.
Well here's another dinosaur. My boys are always surprised when they borrow one of our history or "old" reading books, how history was taught in our "age" compared to theirs and how English usage was used then and how clean our stories were compared to books today.