Commentary
While reading the California Education Code the other day, I made a stunning discovery. School districts are allowed to burn books. Is California that far ahead on the road to totalitarianism?
Though it seems like we’re living in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” where school districts can technically burn books, the reason for the law is more mundane. Section 60530 in the Education Code describes the process of destroying obsolete books that cannot be donated or sold to anyone else at the end of their useful life “by any economical means.” Matches are cheap and no doubt many districts have employed a bonfire for old books since the law was enacted in 1976….