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In defense of some of this, I think they’re meant less as a stand alone list and more of a “add these books to supplement the standard Woke books list that almost everyone gets through high school” list. And the job of the list is to simply correct for just how far left, multicultural and woke the usual readings are. And that is done by curating a book list that specifically includes things left off of those more woke lists. They’re corrective lenses to fix the gaps of literary history, and as such they don’t need the more progressive, liberal, or multicultural voices included because the stuff most kids read or are otherwise exposed to.
For an exhaustive list, sure, I think I’d balance things out more. I want kids exposed to as many views as possible. It builds character to have to understand ideas and perspectives you don’t agree with. But if 99% of the standard curriculum is Woke leaning and multicultural, you don’t correct it with a perfectly balanced curriculum that includes more woke multicultural stuff, you correct it by introducing conservative books.
I'm not sure that modern curricula can be properly described as "multicultural" if they are curated to promote a single political narrative. I remember a fairly woke friend of mine once asked me for book recommendations for Native American history month and was confused when I suggested things like a history of the Comanches, the Popul Vuh, a book about Aztec philosophy, or 1491 by Charles Mann, because what they really meant was "give me another book about how much life sucks on the reservations and how it's all our fault."
Aztec philosophy? Would be interested in that
This is the book I was thinking of, though one might want to supplement it with a more general history.
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This is an aspect of these lists that I hadn't considered, because my own high-school education looked quite a bit like the St. Johns list. I graduated public (although rich, white, and suburban) high school in 2016, and we had at least one Shakespeare every year, various English classics (Austen), Robert Penn Warren, Kafka, Camus, etc. There was some woke stuff too, but nothing that actually really challenged the Liberal, Modern worldview. But I suppose that things have likely become significantly worse since then.
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