As an English teacher, I hear you. I think the greatest disservice we do to the majority of the "canon" is to teach it to adolescents. Literature should be read, discussed, and engaged with, not "taught". That being said, I have to do literary analysis with my students both because there is more meaning to be had in literature than appears at the surface level (something young teenagers don't really get) and those pesky state assessments--on which school funding and my JOB depend--require it (despite the fact that developmentally, a 7th grader might not even recognize that an author is using sound to evoke mood, let alone HOW he or she is doing so).