How to deal with books read for class?

I've been thinking about how to deal with the books I have to read to class. On one hand, I want to include them because they are what I am reading, what I have time to read. On the other, I don't want to put down things I would never have picked up if not for class. So I think I'm going to compromise and list the books I read that are commercially available and not textbooks. That being said,

Just finished reading: Schooling America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation's Changing Needs, by Patricia Graham.
This book traces the history of what is taught in schools and why, and how schools shaped themselves around what the public wanted for their children. Some interesting things to me were how cyclical some of these trends seem to be. For example, in the 1920's there was an idea that all children should have a general base of knowledge. Because this was the age of immigration, that base was a knowledge of English and American values of hard work, etc. Sounds pretty similar to the No Child Left Behind standards that now push for every child to have a basic knowledge base.