Last month, the Republican-controlled Ohio state legislature passed a bill requiring all institutions of higher education to institute a mandatory course in “American civic literacy.” The bill specifies that this course:

…shall, at a minimum, require each student to read all the following:

(1) The entire Constitution of the United States;

(2) The entire Declaration of Independence;

(3) A minimum of five essays in their entirety from the Federalist Papers. The essays shall be selected by the department chair.

(4) The entire Emancipation Proclamation;

(5) The entire Gettysburg Address;

(6) The entire Letter from Birmingham Jail written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr;

(7) The writings of Adam Smith, including a study of the principles written in The Wealth of Nations. 

I can’t tell if the Republicans are serious about this stipulation regarding students’ reading “all the following”: The complete writings of Adam Smith alone come to 3,529 pages, which, over the course of 13 weeks of instruction (the typical number of weeks at Ohio State University), works out to 271 pages per week. Throw in the other writings the legislature is requiring on top of that, and well, that’s a lot of reading for one class.

But I’m a believer in the great books, and the more reading students have to do, the better. So count me in!

I’d be very excited to do a close reading of the Declaration of Independence with undergraduates in a pro-Trump Republican state. In the Declaration, they’d find out what the American founders thought made King George a tyrant. Things like this:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither

And this:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world

And this

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

And after I told my students that their Republican, very pro-Trump, legislators were requiring them to read these passages in the Declaration, I’d ask them why they thought that was the case. Do their elected representatives not like Trump? Do they like King George? Do they think the American Revolution, or the Declaration, was a mistake? Or have they, perhaps, not read the text they’re forcing undergraduates to read?

I’d be doubly excited to have students do some close readings of Adam Smith. They’d read passages like this:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Or this:

We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent.

Or this:

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.

Or this:

To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour from the parish where he chuses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice.

Or this:

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.

The next step for the bill is for the governor of Ohio to sign it. Before he does so, he might want to read some of these texts.