The quote below on dropping classics is exactly what I was looking for. But it is no longer available at the site, because they don’t keep them up. I would love to read the whole article, but the search engine won’t look for it by name. And when I found it, it would cost me $3 to get. I don’t know that it’s that good.

So from now on, when I find good content, I’m going to quote the most essential parts.

Kathleen Parker wrote this in an article entitled “No ‘Great Expectations’ When Schools Shun the Classics.”

Excerpt: “Call me a grouch. Call me a fuddy-duddy. Call me when it’s over. I’m talking about the latest fad of shelving literary classics in favor of contemporary, more fun-to-read books, which is now being advanced by the nation’s oops-educationists. Johnny can’t read? It must be the books. Thus, teachers in growing numbers are tossing literature’s old fogies — Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner, that ilk — from school curriculums, and substituting more ‘with-it’ storytellers. You’ve never heard of these authors, and they won’t be remembered long, even by the teens for whom they write.”

This was in the Abilene Reporter News online.