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A lot of time the time an author can indeed put across the exact opposite of what he intended. His claims for what he meant should not be an impediment to others' interpretation.

I didn't claim that the sexuality of Messrs. Whitman or Baldwin is a merit. Whitman is leftist agitprop? He revolutionized American verse and his influence is with us still. Any survey of American literature without him is incoherent. It would be like reducing Thoreau to Environmentalist Agitprop. And I'm speaking as someone with a Post Graduate degree in English Literature. The question is one of objective standards of a Literary Canon which the Leftists have been trying to dismantle for years and with whom you apparently agree as you want to leave out key figures in Western Literary history.

Somehow with the guidance of my wife who earned her English Literature degree at Yale, my kids and those who choose her school WILL survive as far better educated than the inmates of gummint skewels whether you think so or not. That will be a result of who and what she is and not of which school granted her which degree.

Literary Canon??? Huh???? If you are a teacher (and your first paragraph suggests strongly that you are) you seem not to have noticed that the edumakationalist establishment is quite leftist. A kid with a library card usable at a quality library, with a thirst for knowledge and with access to others who care to involve that kid in the great conversation of mankind is equipped with most of what is needed for an actual education. The addition of holders of "education" degrees usually but not always hinders their progress. You are not needed.

You also seem not to have recognized the moral insanity of Whitman and Baldwin as demerits, now, did you???

I would recommend Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience to anyone interested in tearing down the temple of gummint misedjamakashun. If he happens to have been a lavender (I suspect he was more of a hermit), he can be tolerated in exchange for those forty pages or so which encourage no one else to be lavender. His politics were questionable but his methodology was superb. Emerson ought not to have disrespected Thoreau by paying that tax. Being jailed for non-payment was Thoreau's freedom. Emerson paying the tax for him enslaved Thoreau involuntarily.

You Post Graduate degree in English Literature is apparently a membership card in the cult of those who claim to know what the authors meant when they wrote the precise opposite. Your degree does not morally command anyone else's adherence to your standards.

Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate are part of the "Canon of Gummint Skewel" Literature. Courses in Fisting are in the curriculum in Lexington, Massachusetts gummint skewels, condoms distributed to gummint skewel 5th graders in New Haven, Connecicut. We private schooling and homeschooling parents have managed to refrain somehow from such atrocities and yet our kids are more than competitve with the gummint skeweled.

Finally, you are still missing the point of most posters on this thread which is: bring your kids up as you please and I will bring up mine as I please and we both owe it to everyone else to allow them to set the educational standards for their respective kids. We need no gummint skewel system of John Dewey and Horance Mann to tax everyone to keep so many kids in ignorance. Take the tax money out of gummint skeweling and the surviving faculty can educate any kids whose parents carry the financial load for the spreading of such ignorance together with anyone else foolish enough to share the burden.

Let's see. Can my kids be conservative and Catholic and superbly educated without wallowing in Whitman posing as an "objective standard" of literature? That would be a big YES! Does Borges understand the meaning of the word "objective" despite his Post Graduate (his the capitalization) Degree in English Literature? Not so clear!

My kids are my business and your kids are yours!