Posted on 12/31/2020 6:35:37 AM PST by NKP_Vet
A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.
Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those "in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm," as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: "Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric."
The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of "intersectional" power struggles. Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn tweeted in 2018 that he’d "rather die" than teach "The Scarlet Letter," unless Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is used to "fight against misogyny and slut-shaming."
Outsiders got a glimpse of the intensity of the #DisruptTexts campaign recently when self-described "antiracist teacher" Lorena Germán complained that many classics were written more than 70 years ago: "Think of US society before then & the values that shaped this nation afterwards. THAT is what is in those books."
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
That school would have to ban all literature given that many (if not all) stories base themselves off classical works.
Screw the “young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman”.
We gotta fight back against this stuff.
Just how broken is education when classic literature is shunned. This is embarrassing. Our kids deserve better.
A shitty “novelist” attacking her superiors.
Homer can no longer get to first base.
In Orwell’s 1984, who was Winston Smith and what was his job?
He might as well give it to Padma Venkatraman.
Ray Bradbury warned there would be years like this.
Mark Twain has been banned in many public schools for years. I feel sorry for today’s kids, as they are missing out on some great literature and satire. Some great writers have been tossed aside because of political correctness: Twain; Dickens; Mencken; the list can go on.
What the hell is “ableism?”
Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those "in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm. But, of course, its OK to hate the yids,"
I’m happy for your granddaughter because of the content of those books, but she is going to realize as she ages that none of her peers understand any references to them. Many middle-aged people already have never read them; Western Civilization is being erased in front of our eyes.
The writing was on the wall decades ago when Trivial Pursuit added a category (”wild card”) to keep people ignorant in the more classical fields interested.
It was only this year that I read a part of the ending that was always removed from the versions I read in school.
After Oddyseus kills the “suitors” who had encamped in his home and were badgering Penelope, he strung up all the maid servants and hauled them to the rafters to slowly strangle, because they had given into the suitors. As if they’d had a choice.
Wicked old goat. I like him not at all, anymore.
Stupid people... utterly stupid, devoid of any intelligence or independent thought.
Cull the herd.
As long as they don’t ban cliff notes....
“Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular...”
From ‘1984’:
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
D’oh!
Or Classics Illustrated!
I’m sure they’ll leave “Deliverance” alone, since it glorifies backwoods homosexuality. /sarc
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