Associated Press, Switching Off: Sweden Says Back-To-Basics Schooling Works on Paper (The Guardian) 

“The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether Sweden’s hyper-digitalised approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills.”

Philip Bunn, In Defense of Voracious Reading (Law & Liberty)

“There is nothing about fast and regular reading that prevents me from engaging in close, careful, scholarly reading alongside. In fact, the former can aid someone whose goal is the latter. Broad reading can expose me to texts of which I was previously unaware. These are books I would certainly never get around to reading if I kept a close reader’s pace of 3-5 yearly books, selected only from the best of the best. If I instead feel free to read buffet-style, selecting what books strike me, putting them down if I choose, and exploring uncharted literary territories, I am bound to find works worth re-reading slowly and closely.”

Ross Douthat, The Subtlety of J.R.R. Tolkien (The New York Times)

“So sometimes it’s realistic, not naïve, to portray the darkness itself as the glamour, the appeal of an evil power as the point. The devil appears to some people as Lucifer the light-bringer, yes — but his darker visage finds worshipers as well. And when we talk comfortably about Tolkien’s supposed unrealism and naïveté, maybe we’re really expressing our discomfort with that cold and bitter truth.”

The Ezra Klein Show (podcast), America’s Top Librarian on the Rise of Book Bans (The New York Times)

Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association explains why she thinks parents shouldn’t have much input into what their children read. It’s a fluff interview that seeks to marginalize concerns about explicit content in public libraries. However, it is helpful to hear her vision of her role as a librarian in her own words.