Improving the education of our youth is a task far more complicated than sending a few teachers off to summer Advanced Placement training and buying good books for students to read. But AP English Literature is the ideal place to start a school’s intellectual renovation because students have been reading and writing since first grade.

The difference is that the AP work connected with these two “R’s” is on a new level of difficulty — a level that will spill over into student work in social studies and science as well. Logic and the ability to read closely are skills used in all aspects of education.