Published March 2, 2026
WHEREAS, Frederick Douglass said, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free”; and
WHEREAS, Ray Bradbury said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them”; and
WHEREAS, Abraham Lincoln said, “I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to have grown up among books”; and
WHEREAS, Henry David Thoreau said, “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all”; and
WHEREAS, Emily Dickinson said, “There is no Frigate like a Book/To take us Lands away”; and
WHEREAS, J. K. Rowling said, “I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book”; and
WHEREAS, René Descartes said, “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries”; and
WHEREAS, W.E.B. DuBois said, I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not, across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas…I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension”; and
WHEREAS, the ability to read and contemplate books is a supreme educational achievement, an essential preparation for college, an engine of maturity and happiness, the key to success in many professions, a preparation for civic participation and leadership, the primary mechanism for transmitting the culture of the West, the most effective way of accessing times and places not our own, and the core of marker of civilization itself; and
WHEREAS, recent years have seen precipitous declines in the reading skills, reading time, and attention spans of American students and adults alike, to the point where college students and young employees find it difficult to absorb entire books, thereby greatly endangering the precious societal goods enumerated above; now, therefore,
BE IT ENACTED:
SECTION A:
(1) All students attending [state name] public schools in grades 6 through 12 shall be required to read at least two books in their entirety per semester in all English Language Arts classes.
(a) Only books that have well-established critical reputations as central or foundational to the subject matter of the courses in which they are assigned may be selected to fulfill the requirement specified in Section A(1) above.
(b) Of the two complete books required to be read in their entirety each semester in English Language Arts under this act, as specified in Section A(1) above, at least one of those required books must have been originally published before 1900.
(c) Notwithstanding the requirements in Section A(1) and Section A(1)(b) above, where deemed appropriate, a two-semester English Language Arts sequence at any given grade level between grades 6 and 12, may require under this act the reading in their entirety of two books originally published during or after the twentieth century during one semester, so long as two books originally published before the twentieth century are required to be read in their entirety during the other semester.
(d) For students in grades 9 through 12, no book shall satisfy the requirement specified in Section A(1) unless it was originally published for the general reader, rather than originally directed primarily toward young people.
(e) For students in grades 6 through 8, books originally published with predominantly younger readers in mind may be selected to fulfill the requirement specified in Section A(1), so long as those books have well-established critical reputations for central or foundational relevance to the subject matter of the course in question, or are adaptations of books originally published for the general reader, the original version of which has a well-established critical reputation for central or foundational relevance to the subject matter of the course in question.
(f) Except for the first school year in which this law is operative, every public school shall disclose, on a publicly accessible portion of its website, by grade level and by class, by the end of the immediately preceding school year’s spring term, all books to be required to be read in their entirety in the succeeding school year.
SECTION B:
(1) The requirements specified in Section A(1)(a-f) take precedence over any competing, contrary or incompatible provisions of [state name]’s existing standards for English Language Arts.
(2) By [date specified] the [Chief State School Officer, e.g., Secretary of Education] shall issue guidance to all state school districts on how to adapt the existing [state name] state standards in English Language Arts to the requirements specified in Section A(1)(a-f).
(3) The [Chief State School Officer, e.g., Secretary of Education] is hereby authorized to make any modifications he deems necessary to [state name]’s existing state standards in English Language Arts to render them both compatible with the requirements specified in Section A(1)(a-f) above, and practicable, given the addition of those requirements.
(4) The next systematic revision of [state name]’s English Language Arts standards, and all subsequent revisions of those standards, shall incorporate the requirements specified in Section A(1)(a-f) above.
DEFINITIONS:
1) The meaning of the word “book” includes “play,” in the sense of the script of a dramatic performance.
Mark Bauerlein is Contributing Editor at First Things, trustee at New College of Florida, and Professor Emeritus of English at Emory University. His books include Whitman and the American Idiom, Literary Criticism: An Autopsy, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, and The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults. He has drafted ELA standards for several states and written extensively on K-12 curriculum, college readiness, and the humanities.
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow in the Education and American Ideals Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. For over a decade, he has been a national leader in the reform of both K-12 and higher education, authoring or co-authoring model legislation designed to protect campus free speech, reintroduce the study of Western civilization, restore the reading of classic literature, prevent high school walkouts for purposes of political protest, block mandatory DEI indoctrination, bring public policy debate back to college campuses, and more. He writes regularly on education issues for a wide range of outlets, particularly National Review Online, where he has been a contributing editor for over two decades.
