A. Pasta is far easier to cook than to classify. Choose a good brand made exclusively from durum wheat. Boil water, add coarse salt, toss in the pasta, and stir to prevent sticking. Check regularly by biting a piece in two. Chew attentively, testing for firmness without a hint of granularity against the teeth – perfectly cooked pasta is al dente, literally “to tooth”. Then scan the remaining section that faint white trace in the middle that some Italians call anima, the soul, of perfectly cooked pasta. Don’t add oil to the water or on any account throw a strand of pasta against the wall to see if it sticks. Italians never heard of these bizarre, mutations probably born in the 19th century United States that are about as Italian as canned elbow macaroni.

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The censorship that has spread throughout American education has pernicious and pervasive effects. It lowers the literacy level of test because test makers must take care to avoid language as well as works of literature and historical selections that might give offense. It restricts the language and the ideas that may be reproduced in textbooks. It surely reduces children’s interest in their schoolwork by making studies so deadly dull. It undermines our common culture by imposing irrelevant political criteria on the literature and history that are taught.

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