#Disrupt Texts’ assault on Shakespeare and other classics: Money, ignorance and social backwardness

World Socialist Website ^ | 11/29/21 | David Walsh

[Borges]

#Disrupt Texts and its co-thinkers are dedicated enemies of enlightenment and education. Students, teachers and serious academics should treat them with derision, challenge them and expose their ignorance.

[Borges]

It's really sad when Trotskyites are doing a better job of standing up for Western Civilization than anyone in Congress. We need to be as forceful about it as this guy is.

[mylife]

A lot of Tx Ranchers are better read than Tx collage kids...

[deks]

The website/group referred to in the article...

https://disrupttexts.org

[deks]

What does it mean to “disrupt texts”? The website states defensively that “We do not believe in censorship and have never supported banning books.” It lies. On Twitter, its representatives write, “Do we encourage teachers to replace racist, harmful texts? ABSOLUTELY. Can you teach a great text and still have a harmful impact? Yep.”

In 2021, which “racist, harmful texts” are being taught in US classrooms? Hitler’s Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? No, these people have in mind Fitzgerald, Harper Lee, Arthur Miller and Shakespeare, among others. And what does it mean, to “move away from continuing to give space to these voices,” if removing, i.e., censoring and suppressing, texts is not involved?

[SunkenCiv]

Search results for Shakespeare (limited by system to 2014):

• First They Came for Shakespeare... [11/06/2021]
• British Theatre Adds Trigger Warning to Shakespeare's Macbeth [10/29/2021]
• Harvard segregates the audience for a theatrical performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth tonight [10/29/2021]
• Bard timing: Argentinian TV reports death of Shakespeare after Covid jab [05/31/2021]
• William Shakespeare, First Man in World to Receive Covid-19 Jab, Dies Aged 81 in England [05/25/2021]
• An honourable tradition: the history of the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations [04/23/2021]
• Shakespeare unveiled: Ground-breaking new discovery about effigy above famous bard's grave may finally end mystery of what he looked like [04/12/2021]
• Shakespeare's Globe Prepares To Re-Open its Doors [03/09/2021]
• William Shakespeare ditched by woke teachers over 'misogyny, racism' [02/16/2021]
• Woke teachers want Shakespeare cut from curriculum: 'This is about White supremacy' [02/15/2021]
• Feeling Blue? What You Need Is a Dose of Shakespeare [02/05/2021]
• Brit Hume on Twitter: With apologies to Shakespeare, it will be said of Trump that nothing in his presidency became him less than the leaving of it. [12/26/2020]
• Shakespeare Does Halloween [10/30/2020]
• An Original Copy of Shakespeare's First Full Collection Sold for $10 Million at Auction [10/15/2020]
• Today's Shakespeare vs Ben Johnson Rap Poet Contest? (Some offensive language) [09/03/2020]
• Why Chinese Students Studying In America Need To Learn Shakespeare [05/15/2020]
• Happy (456th) Birthday William Shakespeare! [04/23/2020]
• Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine. What are you doing with your time? [04/11/2020]
• The Worst Diseases in Shakespeare's England [03/28/2020]
• Today's Quotefall Puzzle by William Shakespeare [03/01/2020]
• Christie's to Offer Shakespeare's 'First Folio' [01/14/2020]
• The Week in Shakespeare [12/15/2019]
• Censoring Shakespeare: Agenda-driven education is plaguing our universities [10/25/2019]
• Today's Quotefall Puzzle by William Shakespeare [10/05/2019]
• Today's Quotefall Puzzle by William Shakespeare [09/07/2019]
• Who was Shakespeare? Could The Author Have Been A Woman? [05/10/2019]
• Review: 'The Screwtape Letters' at Shakespeare Theatre Company's Lansburgh Theatre [02/22/2019]
• Conservative Speech [06/03/2018]
• Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare's Plays [02/18/2018]
• Royal Shakespeare Company Co-Founder John Barton Dies at 89 [01/20/2018]
• Osama bin Laden's hatred of West developed after visiting Shakespeare's birthplace [11/03/2017]
• If a Shakespeare play is racist or antisemitic, is it OK to change the ending? [11/03/2017]
• Cambridge University slammed over Shakespeare 'trigger warnings' [10/19/2017]
• Chip Davis' "Carol of the Birds" for a summary of Dr. Who's "The Shakespeare Code" episode [10/05/2017]
• USC Misspells Shakespeare On Newly Unveiled Statue (700 Million Typo) [08/22/2017]
• Shakespeare may have been gay, says artistic director of RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] [ed] [07/22/2017]
• Shakespeare Reduced to Rant, Teaching Moment Lost [06/23/2017]
• Shakespeare Would Defend Trump [06/19/2017]
• Second Protester Rushes Stage At Shakespeare In The Park (2nd Person Tonight Same Play) [06/18/2017]
• Taxpayers Give $30 Million so NYC's Shakespeare Festival can Assassinate Trump Onstage [06/13/2017]
• Delta, Bank of America drop sponsorship of Shakespeare in The Park That Shows Trump Assassination [06/12/2017]
• Senators Stab Donald Trump to Death in Central Park Performance of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' [06/06/2017]
• 21 Everyday Phrases That Come Straight From Shakespeare's Plays [12/30/2016]
• U OF PENN ENGLISH DEPT REPLACES SHAKESPEARE W/ANGRY ILLITERATE BLACK LESBIAN RACIST [12/16/2016]
• Bye, Bye Bard: Penn's 'Snowflakes' Ban Shakespeare [12/15/2016]
• Students rip down Shakespeare portrait at UPenn [12/12/2016]
• Shakespeare on Our 'Scurvy Politicians' [09/21/2016]
• So monkeys CAN write Shakespeare - with a little help from mind-reading technology [09/12/2016]
• Election 2016, a drama even Shakespeare couldn't write [07/12/2016]
• Prince Charles Plays Hamlet for Shakespeare's 400th Anniversary [04/23/2016]
• Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 [04/23/2016]
• Post Your William Shakespeare Observations [04/23/2016]
• Radar Scan of Shakespeare's Grave Confirms Skull Apparently Missing [03/24/2016]
• Mitt Romney invokes Shakespeare to fire back at Donald Trump [02/25/2016]
• William Shakespeare Jailed in Bernalillo County [01/19/2016]
• Burbank High School teacher's Shakespeare aversion draws national attention [06/19/2015]
• Teacher: I Don't Teach Shakespeare Because He's White [06/15/2015]
• 'Burn it:' Emoji-fied Shakespeare for kids is worst thing ever [photo] [06/15/2015]
• Santa Cruz Shakespeare's audacious move to gender equity [04/29/2015]
• Shakespeare First Folio from Catholic College to Be Exhibited in London [02/24/2015]
• A Brief History of Catholic Claims to Shakespeare [11/27/2014]
• Shakespeare Didn't Really Want To Kill All The Lawyers, But We Should Deregulate Their Profession [09/19/2014]

[dangus]

Well, yes, but when the collage kids grow up and start writing instead of making collages, ...

[SunkenCiv]

It's really sad when Trotskyites are doing a better job of standing up for Western Civilization than anyone in Congress. We need to be as forceful about it as this guy is.

Well put, Borges.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Even Cornell West, that ultra-Left Black Harvard professor, says destroying Western literature is wrong and advances nothing.

[mylife]

internet word salad.. :)

[mylife]

The man is intellectually honest.

[lastchance]

I agree.

[aquila48]

Bookmark

[SunkenCiv]

The longest surviving sample of Shakespeare’s handwriting, from the unfinished (or at least unapproved by the censor) “Sir Thomas More”, a collaboration with some younger up-and-comers.

Interestingly, it’s advocating open borders (after a fashion), perhaps a testimony to the enduring power of Emilia Bessano Lanier’s, uh, passion.

https://bookhaven.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/shakespeare-more-671x1024.jpg

[Peter ODonnell]

This cancel culture is everywhere and not subject to much oversight. A local museum took it upon themselves to remove a picture of Canada’s first prime minister (Sir John A Macdonald) who was a driving force in creating the country and the railroad link from coast to coast, but of course had the views about native people that were common in the mid to late 19th century. So now he’s being cancelled for those views, as if all the other things that happened meant nothing.

And what have these socialist twits accomplished themselves. Well they’ve cancelled a few people. That’s the sum total of their life work. Just a bunch of jackasses with nothing constructive to do and looking for ways of causing trouble.

[Peter ODonnell]

@ CancelSocialism # Cancelsocialism

[aquila48]

“To be blunt: those who advocate “disrupting the teaching of Shakespeare” should be regarded with utter contempt, they are little better than right-wing hooligans breaking in and setting fires to books.”

That’s a new one on me - us right wingers want to burn books??

His heart seems to be in the right place (against burning books and censorship), but he’s totally out in left field (pun intended) when it comes to assigning blame.

[mykroar]

From the webpage:

Carrie begins by telling us about some important changes she made: “After teaching The Hate U Give for the last three years to freshmen alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, I decided this year Harper Lee and Big Willy were going to take a backseat to my students’ education in English 9. After reading The Hate U Give, and researching the names on page 443 for our research project to honor Black Lives Matter in schools week, we moved into a discussion of healthy relationships that Thomas provided readers in text.”

[dangus]

You meant “colleges.” Silly word Nazi games with an easy-to-make typo/misspelling.

[SES1066]

If not the instigators, these ‘#Disrupt Texts’ advocates are cohorts of the cancelling of Laura Ingalls Wilder as the name on the American Library Association (ALA) / Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) award for children’s literature or illustration. First warded in 1954 when the author was in her 80s, it honored her as establishing the genre with “Little House on the Prairie” and its sequels.

In 2018, the ALA/ALSC chose to remove her name from the award, renaming it “Children’s Literature Legacy Award”, because her books contained “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments ...” The fact that her writing reflected the contemporary conflicts of the US West in the post Civil War era made no difference to these ‘librarians’. In the three years since, I frankly shudder and refuse to look at what gets the award now.

So, yes, they are coming for your children as well as Shakespeare, Kipling, Cooper and Twain/Clemens.

[mylife]

I went to YSU and Kent, but only to party...