The Ministry of Education has changed the list of canonical literature. The new list, which takes effect beginning the next school year, removes numerous positions that were previously held in high esteem. Witold Gombrowicz (Ferdyduke, Trans-Atlantic) and Witkacy have been removed from mandatory reading lists, as well as Goethe, Joseph Conrad, Kafka, and Dostoyewski.

"Apparently, the new government doesn't think young people should learn about the moral dilemmas in Crime and Punishment," notes Adam Kalbarczyk, the principle of the private Paderewski school in Lublin, and a professor of Polish language at the Curie-Słowodska university. "Apparently the government believes young people will get on fine without the most renowned writers of our literature, critical of Polish psychology. This way, the government will keep us all in a state of perpetually being backwards, and we'll be drowned in God-fearing self-congratulations." "This new mandatory reading list will destroy our culture," says Dr. Tomasz Wroczyński of the Polish Literature Institute at the University of Warsaw. "It removes works which are fundamental not only for Poland, but which are also universal in their expression. There would be no XXth century avant-garde without Witkacy, who is the source of the majority of novel enterprises in theater. Gombrowicz is one of the most well kn