Strongest case for rereading High School Classics: They're not really for High Schoolers! High Schoolers shouldn't read anything by Shakespeare. Shakespeare deals with simple awesome concepts like revenge and love, but he does so in a way that no real High Schooler can appreciate. It's like those prodigy composers. A kid at age 16 who can conduct orchestras, but his own music is so bland and lifeless... There are some things that you have to grow up to understand and appreciate. A teenager wouldn't understand Mahler's 9th but a 30 year old man suffering from depression and health conditions with an unfaithful wife would completely understand it to the point of tears. This isn't me snubbing children or their intelligence. It's just that we shelter them from the world, and thus they have no understanding of the world as it truly is. If you read To Kill a Mockingbird, or any classic in High School, for god's sake reread it! You never know just much you don't remember about it. A book you might have found normal enough might have a darker subtext underneath it that you can only understand as an adult. Or perhaps a witty one, or a satirical one, and so on.