Heavenly days! Oops, sorry, Valhalla Days! When I was in high school we read Huck Finn, Macbeth, the Bible (and this was a Catholic high school!), Animal Farm, 1984, and a slew of others. These were the required reading books for English. For History classes, we read such things as The Prince, The Constitution, and I don't remember what all.
Heck, the first ever term paper I was ever assigned was to be at least forty pages long -- double spaced and typed, with footnotes and bibliography.

Part of the dumbing down and PC might be found in the teachers' teachers....