MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 2023
Shakespeare in the schools: Has Shakespeare been banned from the Florida schools? Has something like that occurred?
We humans love our tribal Storylines—our tribal lines of attack! That's a lesson we'd take away from today's New York Times.
More specifically, we refer to the letters section in this morning's print editions. Headline included, the section starts like this:
Shakespeare in Full, Including the Bawdy Parts, Except in Florida
To the Editor:
Re “Make Shakespeare Dirty Again,” by Drew Lichtenberg (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 14):
I feel sorry for students in Florida. Shakespeare has been revered across the globe for his wit, his wordsmithy and his deep understanding of human nature.
Thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantis, it seems that the celebration, appreciation and lamentation of the human condition in its entirety, which is what has made Shakespeare last all these centuries, may be removed from what is presented to Florida students. What an intellectual and cultural crime!
The Elizabethans did not live long by our standards, falling prey to disease and poor sanitation, but they enjoyed life as seen in the flourishing of the arts in the English Renaissance, which included the bawdy sexual innuendo and bodily-fluid humor as well as rapturous poetry and mellifluous madrigals. Shakespeare has captured this spirit as no other has so far.
I am an English teacher, and my favorite part of the curriculum I teach is watching my students get the double entendre and puns (with a little guidance) of the spicier wordplay and situations as well as watching them moved by characters’ struggles and victories in the Shakespeare plays that we study in full.
My students are 13 and 14 years old. They are neither shocked nor offended. They encounter much saltier language and images on TikTok.
J— G— / Pleasantville, N.Y
Darn those letters from Pleasantville! Three additional letters follow, two of which batter Florida for having banned the bard.
On the other hand, note this:
The claim made by this letter writer is rather fuzzy. She says it seems that a full interaction with Shakespeare may be removed from the Florida schools.
We decided to click the link to "Make Shakespeare Dirty Again" to see what we could see. We were taken to an extremely fuzzy recent guest essay. It had started with this fuzzy claim:
Make Shakespeare Dirty Again
It seemed, for a moment, that Shakespeare was being canceled. Last week, school district officials in Hillsborough County, Fla., said that they were preparing high school lessons for the new academic year with some of William Shakespeare’s works taught only with excerpts, partly in keeping with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s legislation about what students can or can’t be exposed to.
According to that fuzzy essay, it had seemed, though just for a moment, that officials from one Florida school district had said that some of Shakespeare's works would now be "taught only with excerpts."
That statement struck us as extremely fuzzy—and so, we dutifully clicked the link in the fuzzy guest essay. It took us to this fuzzy news report by a Florida TV station—to a news report which started like this, clever headline included:
Is Shakespeare ‘to be or not to be’ taught in Hillsborough Schools this year?
Hillsborough County’s new acting superintendent says there has been confusion this year over what can and can not be taught in schools this year, because of a new state law.
Acting Superintendent Van Ayers emailed a statement to parents Wednesday saying in part; “To be clear, we are teaching Shakespeare in a variety of ways in high schools, everything from short excerpts to full novel readings, based on the standards for the course a student takes. Shakespeare has been a foundation of our literary teaching for decades. This instructional plan follows state law.”
The statement by Ayers was far from clear. (By the way, did Shakespeare ever write novels?)
Ayers said there's been a lot of confusion floating around concerning the way the bard will now be bruited. But this news report doesn't say if the bawdy parts of the bard's work actually have been banned in the Hillsborough County schools.
We clicked one additional link, in this case from that TV station's report. Even after clicking that link, we still don't have the slightest idea what, if anything, is actually transpiring in the Sunshine State regarding Shakespeare's spicier sallies and salvos.
That said, we humans love our tribal claims! And one of our blue tribe's most treasured claims has long involved the way the yahoos way down South are constantly banning books.
This morning, the New York Times gave us the pleasure of thinking that some such thing must be going on with respect to Shakespeare in the Sunshine State schools. During a brief additional search, we found no sign that the Times has ever done an actual news report on this alleged state of affairs, but the letters editor gave us a thrill in today's letters section.
What fools we tribal humans be! We think Abraham Lincoln said that!
Too good to check.
ReplyDeleteIsn’t this your guiding principle?
DeleteYou make false claims in your comments that you hope are “too good to check”, whatever that means.
But then when your nonsense claims are easily debunked, you run and hide.
Liz says hi, and still thinks it’s creepy and sad you lie about her.
“Too good to check”, he smugly gloats, unaware of his status as a laughingstock.
I’m not inclined to support mocking, but Somerby’s “debunk” today is moronic, as are his brain dead fanboys.
Somerby pretends to quote Lincoln, but in reality, Lincoln said that Whites are superior to Blacks - oof, but then raged a brutal war against the South over slavery, where he offered no mercy to the right wing slavers, and then after the war turned his concern to wage slavery, at which point he was promptly shot in the head.
Reconstruction was then made into a failure by the antecedents of the modern right wing Republican Party, although a smidgeon of justice was offered by the recent Montgomery boat brawl, where some racist right wingers tried to gang up on a sole Black boat worker, but then he was quickly defended by some nearby Blacks that stomped all over the racist right wingers. This was pointedly ignored by Somerby.
Obama lied about if you could keep your Doctor. Taxing people makes revenues go down. The Christmas Holiday is being repressed in America. The Clinton foundation pockets 75 cents on the dollar. Donald Trump won the Emmy, the Iowa Primary and Popular vote in 2016, and again in 2020 (landslide). Covid is a Democratic Hoax.
ReplyDeleteYes, we in the Blue Tribe love our pleasing narratives!
A Florida superintendent says the new law is confusing, and this is the point of the new law, which is to be vague to prohibit criticism while having a chilling effect on progress.
ReplyDeleteSomerby seems to struggle with simple concepts since his shift to the Right, a few years back.
It's a feature, not a bug with the right.
DeleteThey said they are presenting Shakespeare excerpts not full plays. That is a serious loss to students.
ReplyDelete"And one of our blue tribe's most treasured claims has long involved the way the yahoos way down South are constantly banning books."
ReplyDeleteIs Somerby seriously pretending that they don't ban books in the South? This is weird gaslighting on his part.
"Most book bans are happening in Texas and Florida, according to PEN America. Over the past year, Texas has seen more than 1,200 book challenges, and Florida more than 900. In some cases, state laws are responsible for causing districts to remove books to err on the side of caution, the report found."
https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/
@3:11 thinks s/he knows the purpose of the Florida law. Maybe s/he's right, but maybe Hanlon's razor should apply. Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states:
Delete"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Why can't there be both malice and stupidity?
DeleteAs I recall, PEN is a far-left organization, therefore untrustworthy. Their argument has some hidden flaws:
Delete1. What does it mean to "ban" a book? Traditionally, that meant that the book could not be sold. By that traditional definition, Texas and Florida have banned no books at all. PEN is using the word to mean removing a book from a class syllabus or from a school library. That's different and much weaker thing.
2. Note the trick of providing the number of book challenges rather than the the number of successful challenges. But, this is much less important than #! above. All these challenges are to whether a book should be in a school library or a public library.
3. The left is arguably banning more books than the right today. E.g., Scott Adams's books and cartoons were banned from bookstores and newspapers because of a single supposedly racist comment he made.
1. Wrong
Delete2. Wrong
3. Wrong
Pen (Poets Essayists Novelists) is a non-profit that advances free expression worldwide. Is it now leftist to support the 1st Amendment?
DeleteScott Adams became no longer commercially saleable due to his political views (fascist, misogynist).
DeleteIt’s unsurprising that David attempts to spread misinformation considering how he weirdly lies about trivial aspects of his personal life, like who his cousin is.
DeleteThe blog entry is clearly about book banning in schools but DIC purposely misreads it to suggest otherwise. The Florida legislature banned over 40% of math textbooks, many for no stated reason (although substituting for books from a Texas publisher who is a major republican donor may have influenced their decision). They then made teaching from banned books a third degree felony. The Duval County school system decided to protect its teachers by reviewing over a million titles in its libraries and classrooms, removing them from circulation. DeSantis, apparently needing some grade school math tutoring, suggested that it should take about 10 minutes to review a book for inappropriate content. Simple math, assuming the hiring of 10 book reviewers working 8 hour days, at 10 minutes per book, 365 days a year equates to 5.7 years of work for 1 million titles. DeSantis flew to Jacksonville to complain that the book reviewing was going too slowly, suggesting that the school board was politicizing the issue and dragging its feet. As no money had been allocated for the hiring of the book reviewers, a plea went out to the public for individuals to fill that need. No qualifications apart from some rudimentary instruction necessary. Now who does one think would fill those slots? Liberals who do not believe in banning books and have not turned public school teachers into the enemy? Or right wing undereducated bible thumpers with an agenda? Did I say that, as usual, DIC is full of shit?
DeleteBook banning in schools is not a “weaker thing”, it’s vital to the right wing movement that they remove material that could diminish the indoctrination of their toxic right wing values for those in their formative years.
DeleteBook challenges are not less important, since a primary goal of the right wing is to gum up the system.
Scott Adams wasn’t banned by the Left, he was banned by corporations after a long history of abusive behavior.
Unamused’s final assessment is highly accurate. DIC is a deeply troubled and wounded right wing lost soul.
2:12 agreed. I did not mention, but it is implied, that the jurisdiction over banning books in Florida was largely left to the county school boards (although DeSantis and his legislature made a big show of banning math textbooks at the state level), which made the law non- uniform throughout the state of Florida. The net result of that was and is a lot of fear and confusion about teaching from texts that would constitute a third degree felony. Did I mention that this blog post by Somerby is a crock of shit? It is very clear from the Hillsborough statements that Shakespeare was to be taught in an abridged format, out of fear of the new state law. But Somerby suggests that he is baffled by fuzziness here, apparently too lazy to research the topic and educate himself.
DeleteFrom Neil Postman:
ReplyDeleteWe were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.
Interesting. It did strike me last time I read 1984 that such a punishing, hellish society would be impossible to create or impose. A society drowning in information to the degree that Harvard grads mock the very concept of the truth? It could happen….
DeleteThere's a liberal blog called Lawyers, Guns and Money where during the midterm elections they had one post talking about how the election itself the following day was an existential threat to our democracy ... followed by an open thread about NFL Football!
DeleteThey showed just how moved they were to act upon an existential threat to their democracy, which was to not act at all. When faced with what they described as an existential threat, they chose to watch sports on TV.
Different people contribute according to their interests on that blog. It isn’t written by one guy.
DeleteWhereas 8:49pm is likely one troll.
DeleteGenerally, one can’t fight City Hall, but one could quibble with Mr Postman. Neither author turned out to be prophetic nor prescriptive; both likely had a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, something we better understand today due to fields like psychology and anthropology.
DeleteLOL
DeleteI just played Buckshot Roulette, and it's a thrilling twist on the classic Russian Roulette.
ReplyDelete