Angry at Thailand’s military dictatorship, protesters are taking to the streets in silence to be seen reading 1984 and other dystopian books.

Pimsiri [an activist] watched dejectedly as Thailand’s military moved in to seize power last week, for the 19th time in 80 years. Speaking on the phone the day after the second book protest, she says she feels what’s happening in her country now is frighteningly close to the fictional state of Oceania in Orwell’s novel, where independent thought is crushed and the Ruling Party is omnipresent.

“My friends told me when they read 1984 for the first time they could never imagine there would be a country like that, but it’s happening now in Thailand,” says Pimsiri. “People are really watching you, your computers are being monitored… and many people have been detained in undisclosed locations.”

Great Britain’s Minister of Education Michael Gove wants more British literature on the recommended list for middle and high school students, so he has cut some classic American works. To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and The Crucible are the only dropped titles I’ve found so far.

The head of one British exam board said, “In the new syllabus 70-80% of the books are from the English canon.”

The Department of Education states it is not restricting any books or types of books. It is making their standards more rigorous. “It does ensure pupils will learn about a wide range of literature, including at least one Shakespeare play, a 19th-century novel written anywhere and post-1914 fiction or drama written in the British Isles.”

Oxford University professor John Carey said, “the idea of cutting out American books because they are not British is crazy.”

Elsewhere, kittens frolic in the grass.

Do you have a problem with this? I don’t, because I don’t think asking kids to read Dickens instead of Steinbeck will kill their spirits, and I wonder how many non-classics of the English language exist that will inspire just as many kids as the classics they replace.

I remember one of my English professors saying that new anthologies never added anything to their section on William Wordsworth. They just repeated the same poems with a couple seemingly random ones to make their selection look independent. The random ones stuck him as inferior to the standards. He didn’t say this directly, but I gathered that he believed Wordsworth is not the major poet his reputation suggests, but a minor one of significant place. So if the groupthink could be challenged a bit, Wordsworth could step back from the front line of English literature studies and give space to someone else in another period.

That’s where I go with the minister’s recommendations for British students. Is The Crucible so stinking awesome English-language students must, must, must read it? I doubt it. Let it have a rest and give another strong play its year in the sun. If that means more Shakespeare, Marlowe, or Harold Pinter, it’s probably time for it.