It is this approach which strikes me as real elitism. It amounts to telling these children that, because they live in ghettos or slums, because they come from varying ethnic backgrounds, because they are poor or parentless, they must be deprived of much of the greatness of human thought, and the beauty of human expression. Fortunately there are many good teachers of English who now appreciate that this is a sad perversion of the genuinely egalitarian nature of literature. For literature is indeed the republic of letters , a common inheritance, not the private property of the privileged. Entry to it is not conferred only by the ability to write.
Literature is for everybody because it is about everybody.
Access to it is, in my view, one of the fundamental human rights which it is the duty of a civilised society to safeguard. I will try to provide my own, rather personal, answer. All great literature has a strong sense of place and time, a wonderful precision of detail and a cultural particularity. And yet, paradoxically, all great literature is also timeless. It may describe only a single moment, or a unique scene.