People are so pretentious. The lists of favorite novels on Twitter are absolutely pathetic in their naked desire to look sophisticated.

“1. War and Peace

2. Moby Dick

3. Anna Karenina

4. Brothers Karamazov

5. Infinite Jest”

writes a suburban real estate agent with zero Russian parentage. And then everybody repeats the list with slight variations.

I’m a professional literary critic, so my list updates every week. But even I wouldn’t reread any of the stuff that makes it onto people’s lists even if you paid me to do it.

Governor Pritzker ordered the schools closed until the end of the academic year. Which would be fine if schools were really closed. But they aren’t. They are working very hard on turning little kids into screen addicts.

If you know anybody who has kids in grade school, all they want to talk about is the absolutely insane amount of time idiot teachers are forcing kids to spend online.

An assignment from a Physical Education teacher: “Find information about the importance of physical activity and prepare a 500-word report.” We have beautiful weather. The hiking trails are open. And this is the assignment this pathetic excuse for a teacher comes up with?

I believe it’s child abuse to make children stare at screens. Parents in the Mommy group on Facebook are full of horror stories. Many people are just now realizing what incredible crap secondary education is. I predict a spike in homeschooling after this is over.

We need to realize that schools teach absolutely nothing (as I’ve already discovered from meeting a whole generation of college freshmen) and everything we want kids to know we have to teach ourselves. And constantly battle the idiot teachers who want to outsource everything they do to stupid apps.

And please don’t think it’s just public schools in the US. A very expensive chi-chi fru-fru school in Canada where my niece goes is exactly like this, too. What they are doing to kids should be illegal.