A recent essay in the online magazine Aeon entitled “Reading Should Not Carry a Health Warning,” reminded me of this gem from Allan Bloom’s once-controversial but now largely forgotten 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind.

“Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime.”

Demanding “protection” from ideas contained in books encountered in a supposedly educative environment–whenever it has happened and whatever the cause in which it is enlisted–smacks far more of producing men and women who are acclimated to, and slowly supportive of, totalitarian means.  This is not the way a democracy should insist that its students are educated.  The proper education in a democracy contributes to open minds, not closed ones.