Posted on 06/15/2015 9:13:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Washington Post has published a guest article by a California teacher arguing that American high school students shouldn’t read Shakespeare because he’s a dead, white man.
Dana Dusbiber, who teaches English in Sacramento, says she avoids Hamlet and all the rest because her minority students shouldn’t be expected to study a “a long-dead, British guy” (Dusbiber herself is white). And while Shakespeare is widely regarded as the premier writer of the English language, able to timelessly portray themes central to the human experience, Dusbiber says he only is regarded that way because “some white people” ordained it and he can easily be replaced.
“Why not teach the oral tradition out of Africa, which includes an equally relevant commentary on human behavior?” She suggests. “Why not teach translations of early writings or oral storytelling from Latin America or Southeast Asia other parts of the world? Many, many of our students come from these languages and traditions … perhaps we no longer have the time to study the Western canon that so many of us know and hold dear.”
To bolster her case for dumping the Bard, Dusbiber says that minority students, like those who dominate her own classroom, deserve to study their own cultures rather than being exposed to “Eurocentrism.” But at the same time, she takes the exact opposite position for whites, saying school should be a place for them to explore cultures other than their own.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
If she had the imagination to call Shakespeare’s rhymes `rapping’ instead of iambic pentameter, her butthole surfing students would eat that stuff with spoons.
“She doesn’t want to teach Shakespeare because she knows most of her students cannot read any of it and cannot be made to understand the vocabulary even if read to them and explained but that doesn’t sound well for her or her school system or her union so she proffers a socially acceptable “reason.””
Please - that’s too much unvarnished truth in one sentence!
But...but Islamists in Egypt, Syria and Iraq claimed that he is an Arab called Sheikh Zubier and that Shakespeare came from “shake-spear!”
Gee, now I’m really confused.
al-William Spearchucker? Gee, I dunno, sounds a leetle transracist.
That said, I think Shakespeare self-identified as a living black woman.
I thought he identified with Christopher Marlowe...or maybe it was vice versa...
This woman teaches minority students, and although she dresses it up in new-speak progressive language, what she's really saying is, "My students cannot grasp these universally revered works, so I'm going to substitute cultural fluff and pretend they're being taught."
I have a friend who teaches English in a rural high school, mix of whites and blacks, and after she got tired of hearing her students beg, she just gave in and focuses her entire senior English curriculum around Shakespeare. They read it, have group discussions, watch the plays on DVD, write how the major themes apply to their own lives, write comparisons of the plays, etc. etc. Some classes have bought the plays themselves, and then donate them to her classroom so she has a classroom set for next year.
She used to do just one Shakespeare play, but the kids begged to do more rather than move to other authors.
You can.’t mistake the after work toke for hours until your brain cells are dead look...: )
I take it that’s not a line from Shakespeare...?
Ping
“al-William Spearchucker? Gee, I dunno, sounds a leetle transracist.”
No. Most likely a chuck-full-of-pears.
I make the not necessarily warranted assumption that the teacher is both somewhat intelligent and educated. We are, after all, supposed to think well of people we have not met or become knowledgeable about.
What African culture ever did anything for the freedom of anybody, including themselves?
By the way, by dint of the fact they ended up in your classroom, their culture just became “American.”
Can’t have your culture and eat it too. If you live here, your culture is American.
The very fact they are here and not there should be the end of the argument.
I'd like to bet that many of those "oral traditions" were transcribed and translated by "dead old White men."
In any event, I'll always choose to read a work in the original, if I'm at all conversant in it.
Regards,
Surely there must be many, many great literary works written in Ebonics.
Martin Luther King wouldn’t have approved of the racism taught by this “teacher”
Back when SNL was funny. Eddie Murphy was great in that piece. Going back even further remember Garrett Morris news for the deaf? Couldn’t get away with many of the old sketches now.
That looks like a great way to deport illegal aliens ...
Most of the progress and great ideas came from Europe and former European colonies.
I thought he was a Klingon.
THAT’ll show him.
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