I'm still not sure how it happened; perhaps some misguided fan ended up working in the school superintendent's office. Can't blame it on the teachers -- both of them are too young to know any better. And so I'm left shaking my head, wondering if other parents find this disturbing. I wonder if other parents worry that they could end up paying tuition for UCLA's film school only to discover that their kids are studying "The Brady Bunch" as cinematic oeuvre.

The first time this happened -- "Hotel California" was assigned as part of a poetry unit in my daughter's junior high class -- I went along. I consider myself open-minded. I figured there was more to the song than I originally remembered. But why, I asked myself, if they are going to deconstruct rock n' roll, couldn't they at least study Jim Morrison, who, although something of a degenerate, was at least a credible poet? And what the hell happened to Emily Dickinson? Are real poets suddenly devoid of academic charm or relevance?

Whatever. The class was asked to research and write about the meaning of the song, a tall order for anyone, including the Eagles. My daughter genuinely tried to come up with an intelligent-sounding explanation. But there wasn't an answer per se; even the teacher offered no explanation at the end of the class discussion. Particularly perplexed were the kids who, because of language or taste issues, couldn't even ask their parents what it meant. Granted, most of us with passing knowledge of the Eagles were just as clueless, but we could, given our age and experience, at least offer drugs as the subtext.

Then it happened again this year, this time at my son's high school. It was right after they read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," which is either the greatest contemporary novel of all time or the inebriated ramblings of a genius who stayed true to himself by aimlessly driving around with a friend who neglected his children and used women as cheap entertainment. But I digress.

This was deep into the unit on existentialism; I guess somewhere along the way they replaced Jean-Paul Sartre and Dostoevski with Jack, Glenn, the Dons et al. I was still reeling from the fact that my son hadn't even heard of Sartre when the "Hotel California" assignment came into his life.

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