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The Canon for Sale: How Congress Handed Literature to a Homeschool Company

On March 17, 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce passed H.R. 7661, a bill that would strip federal education funding from any public school whose libraries contain “sexually oriented material.” The bill’s formal title is the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” and it was introduced by Representative Mary Miller of Illinois on February 24, 2026, days after the State of the Union address. Eighteen Republican cosponsors signed on. No Democratic members supported the bill. The legislation now awaits a vote on the full House floor.

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Bush is Back: When a National Nightmare Returns

George W. Bush is back in our nightmares with the opening of his massive Presidential “library” on the campus of Southern Methodist University — all built not to remind us of what a killer he was in the world, but rather what a great a guy he was as he meandered the halls of the White House choking on pretzels while Dick Cheney did all the dirty work as President-in-situ.

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Do Modern Research Methods Make Students Stupider?

I grew up a child of the library.  I borrowed books.  I read books.  I researched college research papers.  I did it all in my local public library and my campus libraries.  The library was the safe haven — the Smart Place — it was a niche where I fit in because I created my own intellectual indentations that nobody else could question unless I decided to share what I was thinking.

Children today don’t have buildings called libraries that mean the same thing to them that it means to people of my generation.  Kids today have virtual hangout places like the internets, and if they want to find something to read to reflect upon or research, they just fire up The Google and all their boring inquiries are returned unimagined.

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Never Dog Ear a Library Book!

For most of my school life, books were on loan for the year and then returned back to the school. At the beginning of the school year, we were given the books we needed and inscribed our names onto a bookplate which had been pasted into the book when it was originally purchased by the school. I was always very careful with the books I got from the school — it was not my property to do with as I wanted.

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Dumping the Dutiful

The Cushing Academy near Boston removed all the books from their library last year in an intentional purge against intellectualism designed to streamline campus thinking.  Cushing replace paper with electronic books and online resources and we cannot but help but wonder what was lost in the pulp dust.

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