See, I think shitty ideologies like that are partly WHY teens don't read. It's sad. While I have nothing against recommended reading lists, sometimes they're not lists for kids, they're book lists for the approval of academia. Out of the fifty kids who got the list, five of them are going to want to read Wuthering Heights. There's nothing wrong with telling a kid to read Jane Austen or To Kill a Mockingbird or anything else, I think in fact they should be reading those, but it's not like you either read classics or nothing.

Although as far as biographies are concerned,... sadly I think fiction is sometimes considered a bit "low brow", too.

(Sorry for the edits, typing too fast.)