Reply to Is Shakespeare not taught in DCPS?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]At bottom this is a question of what belongs in the American literary canon.  What works do we expect high school students to have read to enter the world as "educated" citizens?  They can't read everything, so some choices need to be made.  I don't think that anyone would argue that the canon should be 100% Shakespeare.  But how many Shakespeare works are appropriate, given that choices need to be made?

Personally, I get the the argument that the literary canon has historically been skewed toward the experience of white Americans and Western culture.  And it should be diversified.  So that mean that some Shakespeare will probably need to be replaced with works from non-white authors.  There are plenty of great ones out there. But we need to find a balance.  Shakespeare definitely has its place.

Personally, I think that things have swung too far in the direction of reading books only from the perspective of oppressed groups.  And some books are chosen because they show diversity but they aren't challenging from a literary perspective the way that Shakespeare, for example, is, and that's not helpful.  I'm sure there are people out there who disagree.  But these sorts of pendulum swings are typical, I think, and not worth losing too much sleep over.  [/quote]

I think anyone with a tiny bit of imagination can design a class that goes from the Bible to Shakespeare to Toni Morrison. Or a sequence that does Shakespeare in one semester then Toni Morrison the next.[/quote]

What's it again with the Bible?! Can we please leave religious indoctrination out of school?[/quote]

Stop being a knucklehead. it's not religious indoctrination, it's mythology.[/quote]

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