How I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers

This is a long (and interesting) read, but some context from the introduction:

Several years ago I had the chance to lead two seminars with a group of high-performing Chinese high school seniors. Each seminar had between 20-35 kids; each of these students was a graduating senior enrolled in the international department of a prestigious high school in Beijing.

[...]

Half of the seminar’s time, however, was spent on one work: The Iliad. When the seminar was over, many students reported to me that reading and discussing this one book was the highlight of the three years they spent in high school. This reading was popular enough that a small group of students who had taken the other seminar asked me to teach the Iliad section of the class to them privately over the summer.

and some highlights:

Why, my Chinese students asked, will we read this? Because you need to prepare for American university classes, I replied. But more importantly: because this book might just change your life! I said this without apology or awkwardness. I believed it! Ultimately, if a great work of history and literature does not have the potential to change a student’s life, to shape their character or transform their worldview, there is no point in teaching it! Most students believe this themselves. They can tell whether you believe the books you are assigning are that important. If you do not believe the works you are assigning matter, students will not think they matter either. I presented the Iliad as a meditation on universal problems of the human condition. My students read it as such.

Most students hunger for work that has real meaning. If they must study, they would prefer to study something that matters. They want to matter themselves. That is the second key to reaching cynical teenagers: they must be treated like men and women whose decisions and opinions matter. I was eager to learn from their observations and opinions. I genuinely believe I have as much to learn from my classes as they do from me. I was insistent that the books we read had great moral significance, but it was not my part to force ‘morals of the story’ down my student’s throats. Teenagers rarely respond well to blunt didactics. My role was to provide sufficient historical or literary background so that students could understand works like the Iliad, and then push them to wrestle with the questions these texts posed. The conclusions they developed were their own. Students were eager to tell me of these conclusions because they believed (rightly) that I valued their insights and experiences.

I'm sorry but I'm not sure whether this should go in ~books or ~humanities or some other group.