Since you're an educator I'll spend a little extra time on this:

I stopped writing for ten years because I was required to 'give authors credit for having something interesting to say.'

I stopped writing for ten years because I was required to find something nice to say about Aldo Fucking Leopold.

I stopped writing for ten years because Willa Fucking Cather was held up as someone worth studying while Rudyard Kipling was held up as someone to mock.

I've made over 10 grand with my writing. I have, in the past, shared an agency with Stephen King (and hope to in the future). I am an objectively skilled writer and the approach my educators took in sharing "great books" drove me to mechanical engineering.

There's a world of difference between disagreeing with your friends as to whether or not Game of Thrones is of value and having your grade depend on the correct interpretation of Axe in Hand.

I don't think anyone who teaches literature actually believes that books contain "truth" in any objective way, at least.

I went to a school that, at the time, was ranked in the top ten in the United States. I choked on objective fucking truth. MAKE NO MISTAKE - educators and their forced interpretation of 'great works' stopped my enjoyment of literature and my participation in prose COLD for ten.fucking.years. Riddle me this: one of your students hands in a report on, say, the scarlet letter that argues the protagonist is passive, the narrator is sexist even within his own time and the message of the book is 'don't make waves.' Do you consider that student's points? Or do you immediately go to where he misinterpreted things?

I never wrote that essay. But I wrote plenty like them, early on. And what you miss is the fundamental basis of your entire line of argument: you're right, that kid's wrong, and if we can just box his ears a bit he'll come around.

You know why kids are subjected to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Because thirty fuckin' years ago, 'boomers thought it was brilliant. THEY'RE WRONG. But it's gonna be another 20-30 years of dragging kids' faces through the muck before people give up.

Some books just have longer muck hold time.