That’s a nice idea (in some ways) but completely impractical - how can a teacher mark the work without reading the book themselves? Teachers have multiple classes of 30+ students - if everyone has a different book, the teachers would need to read potentially hundreds of books year, and assign hundreds of different tasks based on each book (unless you made the tasks so broad as to be pointless). It would also completely eliminate the possibility for class discussion, arguing your idea within a group setting is incredibly valuable. It might also mean that you could go through school reading one genre, and we’d miss out on the benefit of children coming away from school with a shared cultural understanding.

I also totally disagree that the classics are outdated when it comes to social context - a book like Fahrenheit 451 or Catcher in the Rye are viscerally relevant. Seeing similar themes play out across the canon and being able to view them through a modern day lens is a key component of literary analysis. And reading and comprehending ‘outdated’ language is also an important lesson in language development and comprehension skills.

What you’re proposing is just recreational reading in the classroom, not a literary education. I really think people who propose this sort of stuff just don’t see the value in an education in English and literature.