Well Read is Well Educated

Professor J,

Thanks for outlining how we got here. One more question (you know that's a lie, don't you?): has there ever been a case of a country, other than one with diabolical leadership and evil intent, that completely reformed its education system? Finland offers much more of what I'd like to see and think is healthy but our culture more of a problem than the system. Our poor kiddos. The corporate concept of work harder, and for longer hours has trickled down into education. But perhaps that is by design. Corporations hardly need free and divergent thinkers, as Sir Ken points out, but outside of creative ventures they need people to show up on time and do what they're told.

From what I can tell, one of the results of the Great Recession has been that corporate America's attitude toward employees is "You are lucky you have a job."

Okay, I'm seeing your ongoing point (dang it!) about the benefit of unions.

How fortuitous that Banned Book Week lands on the calender while we are having a discussion on education. Every year I'm appalled to see what's on the list. It gets updated from year to year.  The titles are broken down in several different ways from the top ten banned books by decade to the top ten book lists challenged by year. 

 The Hunger Games made the list of ten most challenged books of 2013 and The Glass Castle held the # nine spot in 2012. The Hunger Games...really? And The Glass Castle is written in such a way that will break your heart into a million pieces for the children depicted in this memoir. Some of the scenes still haunt me. I think it would benefit any comfortable and affluent suburban high school student to read it. I found my favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut on several lists. I think he should be required reading for everyone.

The list that always gets me though is the one that lists the classics that have been banned or challenged at some point. I consider so many of these to be necessary reads! And of course now I want to read the ones I've missed.

 The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
 The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
 The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding 
1984, by George Orwell
Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison 
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Native Son, by Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey 
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut 
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence 
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
 
That reminds me that some of these are ones I've never gotten around to. Think I'll pick Lolita this year.