The Importance of Good Literature

As the summer comes to a close and we begin the school year, many students are receiving their first reading assignments for English class. Some students will be reading the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this year, others will read Of Mice and Men, and some will read To Kill a Mockingbird. What do these books have in common? Besides all being great works of American literature, they are three of a HUGE number of books that Sarah Palin tried to have banned from the public library in Wasilla, Alaska. The full list can be found here.

Now any person who reads the newspaper can tell you that the education system under the Bush administration has failed. So one of the top priorities of the next administration should be getting the education system back on track. The GOP's idea for this is to increase testing more and more. But tell me, how do you expect reading scores to go up when you ban literature that provides the very best usage of the English language for students. Granted she can't ban these books from public schools, but by attempting to ban them from libraries she is denying kids the opportunity to read these books for pleasure without paying for them.

And if you need any more proof that she's a crazy person, look at the second to last book on that list. It's the dictionary.

Edit: Turns out the person circulating this was not being entirely truthful. My bad. It's just a list of books republicans commonly want banned. Still, anyone who endorses a political philosophy that would have any books banned has issues.