The best class I had in high school was American Dream: a mixture of literature and history/social studies. You'd learn about a time and then read a book for that time, like Grapes of Wrath or The Jungle or All Quiet on the Western Front. It was a double period, had two dynamic teachers (one old hippie and one young fun guy), and most of the grades were from papers about how the book and history related. More schools should have something like that.