What kind of arrogant, insensitive irresponsible products of spoiled privileged childhoods wrote these Staples ads? Don’t they know that most parents are lucky to get enough money together to pay for one set of supplies for each child?

Things everyone once learned from a public education have become esoteric knowledge.

It fills me with wonder when I turn from mainstream breast-beating about mass shootings and anti-social young people to the world of television where killing

Until recently, English-speaking children were exposed to beautifully illustrated children’s versions of Malory’s stories for their leisure time reading. In school, they studied Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King” in the classroom. Nowadays, they are more familiar with modern retellings that conflate Excalibur with the sword in the stone.