In The Book of the Journeyman, Albert Jay Nock mocks the New York public school system:
One count against the book [that was being removed from the school curriculum] according to this report, was that the description of Calvin as the “political boss” of Geneva was likely to offend the Presbyterians. It does not appear that the description was regarded as inaccurate; indeed, there is the clearest and most abundant evidence that no other description of Calvin’s civil relations with Geneva is admissible. The question therefore arises, whether in the mind of New York’s school-authorities the chief end and aim of teaching history is to please Presbyterians or to inculcate a competent understanding of some very important and significant social phenomena that appeared in Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century, and that quite distinctly colored European history for three hundred years…. Not to mince words, the fact of the matter is that under our educational system, the study of history, like other formative studies, does not even rise to the dignity of being a waste of time.