This has been degrading for some time. I learned to read at a very early age and often got punished for it in school. Instead of trying to force my children to read we enticed them at first, and as adults they are still huge readers, but we had major fights with the school system when our children were at 8th (with todays degraded system) grade level when they got to second grade.

There are more than a couple on the 100 years ago list that were required when I was 7th and 8th grade.

God, I'm old.

~Sigh~

I settle for adding Atlas Shrugged and paying Objectivists to teach its philosophy.

Actually that was a very interesting article. And although I shouldn 't be, I was pretty surprised. I only was familiar with a couple of the selections on the current reading list. That just did not seem right. It's like there is a purposeful push from American heritage. I'm not a big Nathaniel Hawthorne fan though.