What was taught to children

I'm not talking now.  When children seemingly aren't taught much more than cultural cues and lefty propaganda.  And the big argument over that.

I'm talking back then, in the eerie mist of a bygone age.  The late 20th Century...  How much were those kids failed by similar institutions compared to modern day ones.

Book on the menu when I was coming up

• The usual beginner Shakespeare: Romeo, Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet in that order each year
• The Crucible
• Death of a Salesman (I hated all plays back then.)
• Diary of Anne Frank 
• Catcher in the Rye
• The Invisible Man
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Roll of Thunder, hear my Cry
• Lord of the Flies
• Grape of Wrath
• Of Mice and Men
• The Great Gatsby
• Huckleberry Finn
• A Death in the Family

Other classes read the Oxbow Incident, other Steinbeck titles.

All GOOD literature written by the right people and according to the New Yorker, and also edification regarding racial strife that we were finally and permanently healing for all time following the 1960s.  Plus some subtle but inexorable lefty propaganda.  That was the feeling of the time.  

I mean Steinbeck was a 'boring old Red', and Fitzgerald, too.  We were encouraged to read Jack London and Hemingway for fun.  More Reds.  William Golding was an example how bad fascists were and that we would mutate into one if left along on an island with other High Schoolers and no girls. 

But Twain wasn't a commie.  I read Melville for fun.  Also, not commie.  Shakespeare, of course, but what other plays are you going to feed High Schoolers?  Oh right, Arthur Miller.  Yeah.  Pinko.  

And that list above was from 40 years ago.  Some of those authors have been swept up in the cancel culture.  Despite fine lefty bona fides back then, they are not up to the sensitive snuff these days and out they must go.  Catcher and Mockingbird.  Kids today prolly can't relate to Gatsby.  Oh you CAN'T assign Huck Finn anymore. 

But is this red tinge really the fault of the Boards of Education curricula guids back then?  IS there much 'great literature' written in the past 100 years whose author would not be welcome at a Fifth Avenue dinner party with all the right people of be able to get past the lobby of the New Yorker offices?  Something a typical 11th grade registered Democrat English teacher would assign, despite the author's politics?  So called 'Conservative' aren't amplified, sure, but is there much out there to amplify?  Does the right just not bother to write?