On Letting the Inmates Run the Asylum

"Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning. . . . In other ages, the attention of children was held by Homer and Virgil, among others, but by the reverse evolutionary process, that is no longer possible; our children are too stupid now to enter the past imaginatively. No one asks the student if algebra pleases him or if he finds it satisfactory that some French verbs are irregular, but if he prefers [John] Hersey to [Nathaniel] Hawthorne, his taste must prevail. . . . And if the student finds that [Hawthorne, for example] is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

--Chapter 7, note 16 (excerpt from letter from O'Connor).