This article made me scream when I read it yesterday.  I'm all for encouraging kids to read what appeals to them, but to have self-selected reading replace required reading in the classroom seems outrageous to me, and a disservice to the students.  I was a voracious reader when I was kid - I'd rather be curled up with my nose in a book than be anywhere else (fittingly, I was the daughter of a high school librarian and a former math teacher).  I was encouraged to read whatever I wanted, and no one told me to put down the Danielle Steele novels.  But I never would have discovered the joys of Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, or Dickens if someone hadn't required me to read them - and Pride and Prejudice, which I read for the first time in high school, is still my favorite book in the entire world.  I certainly wouldn't have picked up Shakespeare.  And I loved to read.  

You mention the communal aspect of reading - and I would take it even one step further - think of all the cultural and literary references that come from the reading of classics.  Aren't these things that future generations should know?