The decision is aimed at better performance on state tests and avoiding sexual content found in some of the Bard’s work.
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE! EVEN FUCKING SHAKESPEARE IS TOO “WOKE” FOR THEM!
God damn, I shouldn’t let them piss me off so much, but this is craziness.
Ron DeSantis, I bite my thumb at thee.
Shakespeare is never taught properly in school anyways. I always hated it. They teach plays by making you read and analyze. That’s like taking a film course and reading the scripts but never watching the movies.
Once you watch Shakespeare as intended, on a stage but nothing fancy, by actors who don’t take themselves too seriously, it clicks. But reading the plays as a teenager is just dumb.
I was so glad one of my high school teacher had us watch movies after we read a play. The best was her having us watch Throne of Blood after we finished Macbeth.
My school would have his read a portion ourselves, then we would follow along to the audio while rereading it, and for bonus points you could read a speech from it to the class at the end.
Maybe not perfect but I do remember Julius Ceaser.
I enjoyed English class in school, but in the years during and after university, I’ve come to realise just how much I was missing out. I used to think Shakespeare was overrated, but now I see the big deal
In a way, it’s fascinating to see the fall of the Roman Empire, 21st century edition.
Gotta love teaching for a test, rather than to educate.
Except they teaching to a purity test now
Here’s an excerpt from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, an analysis of the causes and destructive path of Fascism before and during WWII. A high school teacher who joined the party to cover for his anti-Nazi past is talking about which Shakespeare plays he could teach:
“Tell me, Herr Hildebrandt, what about Julius Caesar?”
He smiled very, very wryly. “Julius Caesar? No… no.”
“Was it forbidden?”
"Not that I remember. But that is not the way it was. Everything was not regulated specifically, ever. It was not like that at all. Choices were left to the teacher’s discretion, within the ‘German spirit.’ That was all that was necessary; the teacher had only to be discreet. If he himself wondered at all whether anyone would object to a given book, he would be wise not to use it.
This was a much more powerful form of intimidation, you see, than any fixed list of acceptable or unacceptable writings. The way it was done was, from the point of view of the regime, remarkably clever and effective. The teacher had to make the choices and risk the consequences; this made him all the more cautious."
Am I the only who doesn’t give an eff about Shakespeare? Sure I love the history of it all, but there’s too much good shit to read that doesn’t involve an annoying archaic English and will never use it again unless you do plays in the park.
Except that apart from maybe the bible, there is probably not a single literary body of work that is as often refered to as Shakespeare’s in western media, literature, movies, series, games … you name it. It’ll help you appreciate A LOT of other stuff a lot more if you get into it a little. Shakespeare is used and reused everywhere, all the time.
“Come, come, you wasp; i’ faith, you are too angry.
Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Petruchio: My remedy is then, to pluck it out.
Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
Katherine: In his tongue.
Petruchio: Whose tongue?
Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.”
Lol isn’t returning to Shakespeare half the point of Florida’s new SAT replacement test that is created by hard-core Catholics? The “classical tradition” is the shit, so I was led to believe.
They haven’t read any of the classics. Just like they haven’t read the bible.
That classics standardized test to me is a bit to consider. If I were a classics professor I would be sounding the alarm about being dragged over to the conservative side. If nothing else to stop my field from being guilty by association.
Aristotle is not on the GOP side. He was on his side. Stop reframing him. Stop claiming him. If you want to know what he said than read it.
Classics has been a bastion of white conservatism my entire life. I think the number of people in that field who disagree with DeSantis on much of anything is quite small.
I haven’t observed that.
The decision is aimed at better performance on state tests
Fucking good. We’ve constantly spent more than our peer countries on public education, but our quality of education is trash. I don’t know if it’s the bloated admin state, the desire to constantly try to teach new things in various ways then ditching the programs after 2 years, or just overall incompetence, but our education system is incredibly well funded, but doing shitty.
It’s like watching the angels buy the 2 best players in baseball and have a .500 record…except the U.S. school system is playing more like the A’s
