That's also how I got to read Crime and Punishment twice: in Russian, when I was in school in Ukraine, and then in English, at a high school in Brooklyn the very next year. Had a blast both times, really.
Our AP English teacher that quarter was a six-foot-something metalhead whose name I, unfortunately, forgot. But his class is one of my warmest memories of those years. One time he took the whole class to a Russian restaurant (as an optional excursion, we paid for ourselves) just to give the kids a better immersion into the Russian culture (the school was right next to a Russian-speaking neighborhood anyway). Even for me, it was something that created a real-life context for the fictional work, and of course made it more exciting.
So I'd say - assigned reading is not necessarily the death knell for a work of art. It really does depend on the teacher. However, statistically, it probably kills it for most people, so in the very least, there's no point in having a nationwide standard.
Which brings me back to OP's point: the problem isn't just that there's assigned reading in ex-USSR countries, it's that everyone has the same assigned reading. That has a devastating effect, I think. At least in the US, even if a book is destroyed in the classroom, there are decent chances that most of the students won't be affected because they'll have different assigned reading.
That's also how I got to read Crime and Punishment twice: in Russian, when I was in school in Ukraine, and then in English, at a high school in Brooklyn the very next year. Had a blast both times, really.
Our AP English teacher that quarter was a six-foot-something metalhead whose name I, unfortunately, forgot. But his class is one of my warmest memories of those years. One time he took the whole class to a Russian restaurant (as an optional excursion, we paid for ourselves) just to give the kids a better immersion into the Russian culture (the school was right next to a Russian-speaking neighborhood anyway). Even for me, it was something that created a real-life context for the fictional work, and of course made it more exciting.
So I'd say - assigned reading is not necessarily the death knell for a work of art. It really does depend on the teacher. However, statistically, it probably kills it for most people, so in the very least, there's no point in having a nationwide standard.
Which brings me back to OP's point: the problem isn't just that there's assigned reading in ex-USSR countries, it's that everyone has the same assigned reading. That has a devastating effect, I think. At least in the US, even if a book is destroyed in the classroom, there are decent chances that most of the students won't be affected because they'll have different assigned reading.