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Michelle Malkin - 2 lazy 2 teach
townhall.com ^ | 6/30/04 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 06/29/2004 10:55:24 PM PDT by kattracks

Have you checked your child's summer reading list? Beware: Some lame-brained school officials have decided to ditch the sonnets of Shakespeare for the tripe of Tupac.
 
That's slain gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur -- the drug-dealing, baseball bat-wielding, cop-hating, Black Panthers-worshiping, convicted sexual abuser who made a fortune extolling the "thug life" before he was gunned down in Las Vegas eight years ago.

 Teachers in Worcester, Mass., have embraced Shakur's posthumously published book of poems as a way to get middle school students' attention. "We wanted to include books that kids would want to read," Michael O'Sullivan, a member of the summer reading list selection committee, explained to the Telegram and Gazette of Worcester last month before school let out. ''Reading counterculture in schools, and to get kids to read anything that is not completely objectionable, is the goal,'' Deputy Superintendent Stephen E. Mills echoed.

 Frances Arena, manager of curriculum and professional development of the Worcester Public Schools, told me this week that Shakur's book will remain on the list for the foreseeable future because it "heightens awareness of character education" and, more importantly, because it's "popular with the kids."

 If that's the standard, why not just drop the pretense of academic instruction and assign them comic books and romance novels?

 A school board member in Palm Beach County, Fla., is also championing Shakur's so-called literary work. Debra Robinson lobbied to bring Shakur's book into the classroom last month because "I always think we need to capture the children's attention where they are and bring them to where they need to be."

 The presumption that children -- and particularly inner-city children -- can only be stimulated by the contemporary and familiar smacks of lazy elitism and latent racism. These educators, and I use that term as loosely as gangster rappers wear their pants, are clearly more interested in appearing cool than in inculcating a refined literary sense in students. Their aim is not enlightenment but dumbed-down ghetto entertainment. So that teachers and pupils can "relate" and be "down with that." So they can "keep it real." You know what I'm sayin'?

 The schoolhouse rap peddlers disingenuously argue that Shakur's puerile scribblings serve as useful tools to engage children in reading. Reading? Deciphering is more like it. Shakur's volume, ''The Rose That Grew From Concrete," looks more like a collection of cell phone text messages, teenage hieroglyphics and Backstreet Boys album titles than a collection of poems.

 One poem is "Dedicated 2 Me." Another is "Dedicated 2 My Heart." There's one "4 Nelson Mandela" and another "2 Marilyn Monroe," which laments: "They could never understand what u set out 2 do instead they chose 2 ridicule u." Another Shakur opus is titled "When Ure Hero Falls." Still another muses: "What Is It That I (insert pictograph of an eyeball) Search 4."

 A dictionary, perhaps?

 In riveting prose that presumably rivals Frost or Longfellow, Shakur brags that he is "more than u can handle" and "hotter than the wax from a candle." Edgar Allan Poe had Annabel Lee. Shakur had Renee ("u were the one 2 reach into my heart"), April ("I want 2 c u"), Elizabeth ("the seas of our friendship R calm"), Michelle ("u and I have perfect hearts"), Carmen ("I wanted u more than I wanted me"), Marquita ("u were pure woman 2 me"), Irene ("I knew from the First glance that u would be hard 2 4get"), and Jada.

 Proclaiming his love "4 Jada," Shakur pays gallant literary tribute to the object of his desire: "u bring me 2 climax without sex."

 Lord Byron, he wasn't.

 In an introduction to the dead rapper's volume, Shakur's manager, Leila Steinberg, suggests that her hero has been unjustly denied his "place as a literary artist/poet" because of the "media's sometimes negative portrayal" of him. May I politely suggest that he has been denied a place among the world's greatest poets because his writing is no better than a four-letter word that rhymes with "rap"?

 The Western literary canon has been flushed down the cultural toilet in favor of shallow ramblings by celebrity thugs whose thoughts are best left on bathroom walls.

 As 2Pac might have responded: 3 Cheers 4 Diversity.

Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at michellemalkin.com

©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Michelle Malkin | Read Malkin's biography



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: education; michellemalkin; rapper
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To: aberaussie
I have a middle-schooler in the public school system - so to answer your question, at least from his classes, they aren't "required" to read anything in particular except the textbooks. In his reading class they are required to read a book a week and report on it, but the books are of their own choosing. So far, he's made good choices, but that does have to do with the character he's built up to this point.

I can't say for other schools or when he hits high school. There was a stink last year here about some high schooler's being assigned Tom Sawyer and it's tone towards racism, so they say. I happen to think that's a mighty fine classic!

41 posted on 06/30/2004 8:52:47 AM PDT by momfirst
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To: aberaussie

You can go down to the school and complain to the teacher who assigned the book, but you might be told "You're the only one who complained," which is usually not true. If that doesn't work, you can go to the school board who might accuse you of being a book burner and tell you that if your child is not "mature" enough to read the selected assignments, perhaps she doesn't belong in Ms. Grundy's AP course after all, or you can decide to homeschool (or send your child to a private school that you trust) like you do and choose whatever you feel is appropriate.

Many schools today use books written after 1970 because they feel that books written before that are not politically correct. Honestly! That's the rationale.

Not all public schools assign books such as the one which appear on the PABBIS website, but many do.


42 posted on 06/30/2004 8:57:54 AM PDT by ladylib
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To: mhking

That's a pretty decent reading list. Mine is going to be getting The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Black Like Me, and (maybe) the Count of Monte Cristo. Since she's homeschooled I get to pick her books. I'm thinking though that I will have to subsitite a couple of shorter books for Monte Cristo, which runs 700 plus pages. She may get Dr Jeckyl and Mr. Hide plus Johnny Trevayne.


43 posted on 06/30/2004 10:09:07 AM PDT by BSunday (YES AMERICA CAN !)
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To: kattracks
because his writing is no better than a four-letter word that rhymes with "rap"?

Damn coffee spray across key board....

44 posted on 06/30/2004 10:13:11 AM PDT by antivenom ("Never argue with an idiot, he'll bring you down to his level - then beat you with experience.")
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To: kattracks
I'm sure there are some school board members out there who worship and adore Che Guevara and want to have their captive students read The Motorcycle Diaries to help bring fruition to the budding young Marxist in all of them.
45 posted on 06/30/2004 10:13:32 AM PDT by tdadams (If there were no problems, politicians would have to invent them... wait, they already do.)
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To: kattracks
Spelling Bee Protester replies

But as a gradual start we want to take some dyslexics who have failed every effort to learn reading in regular spelling, and teach them in reformed. Perhaps some day one will hand you a note in SoundSpel. Would you deign to read it, knowing it made that man literate? Could you read it?

Well, SoundSpel drops silent letters ("no" not "know") and it spells long vowels (AEIOU) as AE (as in steak), EE (as in meet), IE (as in tried) and so on. Heer's a sampl. It is a litl shoking at ferst but being fonetic it's eezy with sum practis. Wuud U tri to reed it, to help a dislexic? To fiend out mor, see www.spellingsociety.org or www.americanliteracy.com/alc6.htm


46 posted on 06/30/2004 12:18:07 PM PDT by weegee (Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. ~~Ronald Reagan)
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To: kattracks

I thought the purpose of summer reading is to make kids read what they don't want to read...


47 posted on 06/30/2004 2:05:54 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Kerry/Clinton--Taking Things for the Common Good 2004)
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To: mhking
None of this Six-pack or 40 Ounce business, or whatever the heck his name was...

I'm sure the literary ghetto realist Tupac was quite familiar with the 40-ounce Haffenreffer...

48 posted on 06/30/2004 2:07:36 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Kerry/Clinton--Taking Things for the Common Good 2004)
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To: BSunday
Have your daughter read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It is a fabulous book - great story, great writing, great everything.

We homeschool too and the utter relief I feel when I read these article is indescribable....relief for my kids and sadness that government school children are subject to this.

Our summer reading list is I Robot, Gulliver's Travels, and Robin Hood.

49 posted on 06/30/2004 2:19:46 PM PDT by Lizavetta
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To: Khurkris
Other members include 18 pack, 24 pack and now even a 30 pack has been sighted.

Apparently those higher numbers came along after I (ahem) "packed" it in.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

50 posted on 06/30/2004 9:28:29 PM PDT by Criminal Number 18F
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To: The Scourge of Yazid
What's the problem with these stunads?

Cognitive ability, deficiency of.

I learned the word stunad two weeks ago. It was a licence plate on a hot car (Cobra? Mustang?) at a show and my buddy explained.

I thought my vocabulary was alright but I'm all wrong ethnically to know that one.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

51 posted on 06/30/2004 9:32:13 PM PDT by Criminal Number 18F
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To: kattracks

A.K.A. I'll pretend to teach you pretend to learn.


52 posted on 06/30/2004 9:35:03 PM PDT by KingNo155
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To: kattracks

Have yo' checked yer chile's summer readin' list? Beware: Some lame-brained skoo officials haf decided t'ditch th' sonnets of Shakespeare fo' th' tripe of Tupac. Thet's slain gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur -- th' drug-dealin', baseball bat-wieldin', cop-hatin', Black Panthers-wo'shipin', cornvicked sexual abuser who made a fo'tune extollin' th' "thug life" befo'e he was gunned down in Las Vegas eight years ago.


53 posted on 06/30/2004 9:40:30 PM PDT by Smartass ( BUSH & CHENEY IN 2004 - Si vis pacem, para bellum - Por el dedo de Dios se escribió.)
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To: Lurker

i read Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage in the 7th grade... i was blessed to have had some teachers (in public school) who taught the classics (back in the mid to late 70s)... i was introduced to Shakespear in Jr. High... my sons (ages 3 and 8) have been introduced to Shakespear this year... and they love it...


54 posted on 06/30/2004 9:41:18 PM PDT by latina4dubya
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To: kattracks
I assigned Orwell's 1984 for the rising Honors kids coming into my 11th grade Honors class next year. Sadly, with the fall of the Soviet Union, that is an excellent book that has fallen by the wayside. At least the kids will get a little something to counteract the anti-capitalist garbage that seeps into so many of their other classes...
55 posted on 06/30/2004 9:44:48 PM PDT by Charles H. (The_r0nin) (Still teaching... or a reasonable facsimile thereof...)
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To: Criminal Number 18F
It's real simple:

1. Dumkopf-see Barbara Boxer.

2. Stunad-see Tom Daschle.

3. Buggerer-see Barney Frank.

Now, wasn't that little linguistics lesson helpful?

56 posted on 06/30/2004 9:49:51 PM PDT by The Scourge of Yazid (Ithaca is "the city of evil." Peekskill is the "city of light." Syracuse is the city of basketball.)
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To: kattracks

Time for a new school bored.


57 posted on 06/30/2004 9:52:05 PM PDT by Old Professer (Interests in common are commonly abused.)
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To: latina4dubya
One suggestion. While I would never suggest someone not teach Shakespeare to kids, I would caution that a lot of monitoring is needed to help them get the multiple layers of meaning behind the best plays. In addition, there is just some material that will never be comprehensible to kids simply because of their age/stage in life.

For example, many of the high schools in my area have gone from teaching Julius Caesar to Romeo and Juliet in the ninth grade. That is a serious error, in my opinion. Considering that R&J was most likely a parody of the Elizabethan romantic-tragedies (much like Titus Andronicus was a parody of the Elizabethan revenge-tragedies), most kids are just not capable of understanding the theme. How do you explain to a teenage kid that the whole point of the play is to make fun of the idea that teenage kids could possibly be in love?

For the same reason, there are even plays that adults can't properly get a handle on. A good example: King Lear probably cannot be truly understood by anyone under the age of 60 (which I am, and while I feel I have a grasp of it intellectually, I will be the first to admit that I probably can't "feel" it the way an older person would be able to), just based on the fact that it is a story of a person looking back at a completed life. That is a theme that it is very hard to comprehend if you are still living a life yourself that is based on possible future accomplishments.

So, while young kids most certainly can gain a great deal from Shakespeare, there is a lot they can miss without some serious hand-holding, and they should always be encouraged to come back to the plays at an older age to pick up what they have missed...

58 posted on 06/30/2004 9:59:28 PM PDT by Charles H. (The_r0nin) ("I'm more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school..." -- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.)
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To: cgk

Bump and thanks!


59 posted on 07/01/2004 1:11:38 AM PDT by lainde (Heads up...We're coming and we've got tongue blades!!)
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To: kattracks

60 posted on 07/01/2004 4:54:31 AM PDT by rhema
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