We got away from books like Othello and Romeo and Juliet because I went to a tech school, (which they killed off here in the 90's in favour of colleges) but we still had to do books and movies that supposedly had some sort of 'learning'. Jimmy Blacksmith was political, Cuckoos Nest was a lesson in treating psychos well, and then of course we had The Club which was unofficially written about the Collingwood Football club because even back then in Victoria they had to force that fucking sport down our throats. The other one we had to do which wasn't bad was the Killing Fields. Both the Killing Fields and Jimmy Blacksmith we got to watch the movie for but the exams were on the books.