I would think any English-speaking (or any other) literature student to be deprived if he or she did not make acquaintance with, say, Cervantes or Goethe, Montaigne or Dostoevsky. This is not any great revelation. If Shakespeare isn't on that list the student is just as deprived if not more so. Does this teacher imagine that they don't teach Shakespeare in other languages? Apparently so:
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.
We do have the time to prune it to the essentials, which is what teachers are supposed to do. Shakespeare is one of those. If she could make the ghost of a case that any oral tradition of Africa is remotely equivalent, call me.
“Does this teacher imagine that they don’t teach Shakespeare in other languages?”
Even better - someone should find examples of Shakespeare and other classic European writers being taught to black students in schools at all levels throughout Africa and send them to her. Never mind, she would probably just blame it on oppressive colonialism and imperialism (even in African nations which have been independent for decades).