Those works of fiction that people tend to study at school, often called the "canon". You can tell these by how many fanfics at Fan Fiction Dot Net have the writer telling you they wrote it for a school assignment and how many people on Facebook have them listed as their "favorite book" even though they never mention reading anything else. Often where we are taught how to plant Epileptic Trees and first learn that Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory.
Almost none of them were written with the intent of being studied and analyzed in a classroom, and most of them were definitely not written for kids. However, there are two things that most of them share: historical and/or philosophical context, and a deeper meaning in every scene. In fact, these media often not being for kids can be used to help develop the maturity of students as they come to understand darker truths and realities about life.
It should also be noted that while everything on this list has held this distinction, a lot of them have had a revolving door as far as how often they are used. Some have stayed more consistent. That's typical; different generations and different areas have different ideas about some things. In other words, your "I read this in school" may also be "Why didn't I get this in school" to someone else. Even so, these works comprise their respective Canons because they reflect the ideas which have meant the most over time to the societies which uphold them.
See also Small Reference Pools.
Compare Lit. Class Tropes, which is about tropes you'd most likely study at school. Also compare From Entertainment to Education, for works that are used as educational material for other disciplines.
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Film
- 8½
- 12 Angry Men
- Alexander Nevsky
- Amarcord
- American Beauty - Why? Because of its influence on post-2000 arthouse and mainstream films alike.
- American Psycho
- Annie Hall
- Apocalypse Now
- L'Avventura (The Adventure, 1960)
- The Battleship Potemkin
- The Bicycle Thief
- The Birth of a Nation (1915)
- The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
- Blow Up directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, or less commonly, The Passenger.
- Breathless
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
- Casablanca
- Cyrano de Bergerac, in France, to complement the study of the play
- Un Chien Andalou
- Citizen Kane
- Contempt
- Il deserto rosso - especially for its use of colours.
- Dillinger è morto
- The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
- La Dolce Vita* L'eclisse
- Fight Club
- The 400 Blows
- The Godfather and/or The Godfather Part II
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Gone with the Wind
- The Great Train Robbery
- Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, such as Rope, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, or Psycho
- The Jazz Singer
- Kes
- Koyaanisqatsi - if you've seen this film, you're probably either a film student or a big fan of Philip Glass (who wrote the score)
- Most of the works of Stanley Kubrick, notably 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- Der Lauf der Dinge
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Usually as a complement to the book.
- The Matrix - Particularly for it's philosophical influences (eg. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave).
- Meshes of the Afternoon
- Metropolis
- Mon Oncle
- La Notte
- Show Me Love - Has been used by middle and high school teachers trying to teach their students about homophobia and tolerance of LGBT people.
- That Obscure Object of Desire
- The Outsiders - Usually as a complement to the book.
- Playtime
- Pulp Fiction
- I pugni in tasca
- Rashomon
- Rebel Without a Cause
- The Island - for discussion of human cloning in korean ethics class.
- The Rules of the Game
- The Searchers
- The Servant
- The Seventh Seal
- Threads
- Touch of Evil
- Triumph of the Will
- Vivre sa vie
- The Wizard of Oz
Literature
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often quite controversially due to people mistaking Mark Twain's point for its exact opposite. Perhaps for this reason, Twain includes a facetious foreword threatening readers who look for meaning in it.
- The Aeneid. Reading and translating it is a rite of passage for Latin students.
- All Quiet on the Western Front
- Amelia Bedelia A popular selection for elementary summer reading lists
- An American Tragedy
- Anabasis for students of Ancient Greek
- Animal Farm note
- Anna Karenina
- Anne of Green Gables, especially for Canadian students.
- Anthem and other Ayn Rand books are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., especially in Red States.
- Arabian Nights
- Anything by Jane Austen, the most common being Pride and Prejudice
- The Art of Racing in the Rain
- The Awakening
- A Bag of Marbles
- The Bell Jar
- Berlin Alexanderplatz
- The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is common in the UK
- Brave New World
- Bridge to Terabithia
- Works by the Bronte sisters, such as
- The Brothers Karamazov
- Burmese Days
- The Butterfly Revolution
- Cannery Row
- Canterbury Tales
- Casabianca
- Cat's Cradle
- The Catcher in the Rye
- La Celestina in Spain.
- Anything by Charles Dickens
- The Clifford the Big Red Dog series
- Commentaries on the Gallic War
- The Cone Gatherers
- Confessions
- Crime and Punishment
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
- Daisy Miller
- Dear Mr. Henshaw is common in elementary schools.
- Dead Stars
- Dekada '70
- Desiderata
- The Devil's Arithmetic
- The Dispossessed
- The Divine Comedy
- The Diviners (1974) Either the Diviners or The Stone Angel are common studies in Canadian classrooms.
- Don Quixote, in schools across the Hispanic world.
- Doña Barbara, in Venezuela.
- Anything by Edgar Allan Poe
- Edward Thomas, in Britain
- Ender's Game
- Effi Briest, in Germany
- Also always there: The works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The rest is rotating, but they are very, very hard to miss.
- Karel ende Elegast (in Flanders and the Netherlands)
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
- Ethan Frome
- Eugene Onegin and many other works by Alexander Pushkin in Russian middle schools (equivalent to American high school)
- The Faerie Queene
- Fahrenheit 451
- A Farewell to Arms
- Florante at Laura
- Flowers for Algernon
- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- The Forgotten Door
- Frankenstein
- The Gift of the Magi and, to a slightly lesser extent, other works by O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) such as "The Ransom of Red Chief," "A Retrieved Reformation," and "The Cop and the Anthem."
- The Giver
- Go Ask Alice
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Great Expectations
- The Great Gatsby
- The Handmaid's Tale
- Holes
- Homer's epic poems,
- Harrison Bergeron
- Hatchet
- Heart of Darkness
- Hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hi(c) (a)nda thu uuat unbidan uue nu (a phrase, in Flanders and the Netherlands it is analyzed to death)
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- Het recht van de sterkste (in Flanders)
- The Histories of Herodotus, for students of Ancient Greek.
- Anything by Victor Hugo in France, most notably:
- Les Misérables
- The Contemplations (poems)
- The Last Day of a Condemned Man as civic education about death penalty
- Invisible Man
- Johnny Tremain
- Julie of the Wolves
- The Jungle
- Anything by Franz Kafka
- Karakter
- Kindred
- The Kite Runner
- Life of Pi
- The Little Prince
- Looking for Alibrandi in Australian schools
- Lord of the Flies
- Lost Girls
- Lolita
- The Lottery
- Maniac Magee
- Mariken Van Nieuwmeghen in Flanders and the Netherlands
- Maus: Notable for being used in increasingly more history and literature classes despite being a graphic novel.
- "May Day Eve" (Nick Joaquin)
- Miriam
- Moby-Dick
- The Last of the Mohicans
- The Master and Margarita
- Anything by Toni Morrison, but particularly Beloved or Song of Solomon
- The Most Dangerous Game
- Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
- Never Let Me Go
- Night
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Nostromo
- In the Philippines, Jose Rizal's novels
- Noli Me Tangere and its sequel,
- El Filibusterismo
- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
- Of Mice & Men
- The Old Man and the Sea
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- On My Honor
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but author Ken Kesey objected to its use in classrooms because it wasn't "great literature" and guessed that teachers probably only used it because the sex and swearing could hold students' attention
- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in the U.K.
- Orientalism
- Oroonoko
- The Outsiders
- Parallel Lives
- Paradise Lost
- Peter Pan
- The Pete the Cat series
- The Plague
- The Poisonwood Bible
- A Prayer for Owen Meany
- F. Sionil José's Rosales Saga
- The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
- Alexander Pushkin's works (Eugene Onegin, Dubrovsky, The Captain's Daughter, Boris Godunov)
- Rabbit-Proof Fence, Usually followed the film.
- The Red Badge of Courage
- The Red Pony
- Reynard the Fox In Flanders and the Netherlands
- Rip Van Winkle
- Anything by Robert Frost
- Robinson Crusoe
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men are staples of philosophy lessons in France.
- The Scarlet Letter
- The Secret Life of Bees
- A Separate Peace
- The Shahnameh in Iran
- Slaughterhouse-Five
- Stone Fox
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- The Stranger
- The Sun Also Rises
- Suspicion (Germany)
- The Tale of Genji: In Japan, studying this is a standard part of the high school curriculum. A few anime have shown high school students wrestling with it.
- A Tale of Two Cities
- Tangerine is common in middle schools.
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- That Was Then... This Is Now
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Things Fall Apart
- The Things They Carried
- To Build a Fire
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The Pledge, especially in German-speaking countries.
- Walewein in Flanders and the Netherlands
- War and Peace
- Without Seeing The Dawn
- The Satyricon, if your Latin Professor is feeling adventurous.
- Voltaire's works in France, most notably Candide and Zadig, as part of teachings on The Enlightenment.
Live-Action TV
- Talking Heads
- Blue Remembered Hills
- The Prisoner (1967)
- Roots (1977)
- Twin Peaks
- The Wire
- Degrassi: The Next Generation is used in Canadian health classes.
Theatre
- Art in France, to discuss the perception of modern art
- Many a William Shakespeare play, usually in written (Literature) or televised form (Films), such as:
- Amadeus
- An Inspector Calls
- Blood Brothers
- Various plays by Alexander Pushkin, particularly Boris Godunov and The Little Tragedies.
- Various plays by Anton Chekhov (his short stories as well)
- Pierre Corneille in France, most notably The Cid and his Oedipus.
- The Crucible
- The Curious Savage
- Cyrano de Bergerac in France
- Death of a Salesman
- Equus
- Faust: First Part of the Tragedy
- The Field in Ireland
- The Good Person of Szechwan
- The Glass Menagerie
- Anything by Henrik Ibsen, particularly A Doll's House
- The Importance of Being Earnest
- Inherit the Wind
- Anything by Molière in France
- Oedipus the King
- Antigone
- Classical Civilisation students and Classics students (different subjects Explanation ) will study a variety of plays from this time. Playwrights such as Euripides, Aeschylus and Aristophanes are the more popular ones.
- Oleanna (depending on how deranged your high school drama teacher is)
- Our Town
- Jean Racine in France, most notably Phèdre (Phaedra) and Bérénice.
- The Revenger's Tragedy
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
- A Streetcar Named Desire
- Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in Australia
- Trifles
- Waiting for Godot
Video Games
- More than a few Edutainment Games:
- The Oregon Trail is a famous frontier death simulator.
- The Super Solvers series.
- Minecraft has become this in some earth science classes.
- Kerbal Space Program is also in the process of becoming one for orbital and celestial mechanics students.
- It's not uncommon to see Team Fortress 2 come up in lessons about video game character design.
- SimCity has been used in urban planning classes.
