Although I write at high summer, by the time you read this another school year will be upon us. I wonder: do students still read T.S. Eliot? They should. A lot of what he wrote continues to reverberate with significance. Consider, to take just one example, these lines from his poem “Gerontion.”

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities.