Banning books is a really bad idea

[Gorbles]

Studying Romeo and Juliet three times? WTH?

Okay, I studied Romeo and Juliet in Grade 10, saw the Zeffirelli movie so many times I've lost count (fun fact: Alice from "The Brady Bunch" is in it, though she's just an extra with no spoken lines), worked backstage on a production of West Side Story, which is a modern musical that sets the story in 1950s New York, did front-of-house when there was a local production at the Red Deer College Arts Centre (that was one of the occasions when our SCA group was able to do front-of-house in costume), and even Xena: Warrior Princess has a "Romeo and Juliet"-themed episode that's combined with a "Xena" homage to Groundhog Day. Romeo and Juliet is a timeless story that can be told in pretty much any genre, setting, and time... but the thing is, most people first encounter it or hear of it in the context of Shakespeare.

It's unfortunate you weren't able to do some different plays. Macbeth isn't my thing, but I loved Hamlet. Those were the ones I did in school. Others I saw or worked on in the theatre (live and film) include "The Taming of the Shrew", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Twelfth Night", "Henry V," "Much Ado About Nothing," and several others.

Yeah, if you want to teach kids that 14-year-old girls were married off to older men without their consent, you don't need Romeo and Juliet for that. All you need to do is look at any cult and you'll see numerous examples of it in current events. But in that case, you'd miss out on a good story.

As I've said: Shakespeare was meant to be seen, not merely read. What seems so dry on paper is much more accessible when you see actors doing justice to the words.

Oh, for sure. Shakespeare was a playwright. One of the playwrights. But that doesn't necessarily have much application (at least from my experience). And drama for me was it's own subject. An elective, to borrow North American speak. I didn't do that personally. I know about the Globe, though my memory is probably more impacted by more recent watchings of Doctor Who than anything studied close to two decades ago at school.

And yeah, three times. I think one time was in primary school though (at the top end; just before high school. So 10 or 11 years old, and then repeated again not long after. And then again a few years after that). I don't think we did Macbeth, but that'd be the only one I remember (Scottish is big in my family, so it could be a family interest / memory and not school. Or it could be school). We certainly didn't do Twelth Night, the Tempest, or Midsummer's, for example. Everyone does Midsummer's! But not us. Anyhoo.

Is Romeo and Juliet a good story? It's a good story. There are plenty. We don't need to use it (and if you avoid using it for that particular lesson, you avoid the devil's advocacy of "but it was more normal at the time" kind of nonsense). A child is not worse off throughout their life because they didn't see it at least once. Or at least, no less than any other famous play, stage show or even film.

The politics of workhouses for the poor was relevant in Dickens' time and it's relevant now - or have you missed all the ranting that people on social assistance should have to go into workhouses or programs to justify feeding them?

I'm well aware of it. My point is that Dickens is not the only person to raise such a thing. It is definitely not difficult to find good authors on the general topic.

I was 14 when I first started studying Shakespeare, and I did pretty well at it (B average, if memory serves). It was in college that I encountered material like "Everyman", "Piers Ploughman", and "The Canterbury Tales."

Do you have any idea how many actual words we have in the language now that we acquired due to Shakespeare, or different usage of certain words? Even names?

Again, I'm well aware. This all came about because of claims of things that would be lost, if certain subjects were (hypothetically, mostly) not on a curriculum. Teaching English is not (just) the learning by rote of words. Though if that were useful, that can also be done!

I'm not saying "every school should stop teaching Shakespeare". My point is that the curriculum is a finite resource that is further compounded by teaching shortages and lack of investment at the local or regional level(s). You've never going to get depth unless a student carries it onto a level where depth and focus on particular, specialised subjects is the norm. At which point a general curriculum no longer applies. In a general curriculum, teachers can adapt as they see fit, and cover whatever they want to achieve the learning objectives set out. As evidenced by whomever in my English department really had a thing for Romeo and / or Juliet. Or maybe Mercutio, I dunno.

My late-to-the-party take:

Removing a book form a curriculum is not equivalent to banning it, or even something which should be in the same conversation.

But the posture of the people celebrating this suggest that they seem to think it is.

Nobody actually cares that some local school board removed Homer from the curriculum; if most people could muster up any sort of response, it would be faint surprise that they were teaching Homer to begin with. But if you tell people you're doing it for reasons that smack of censoriousness, they may take you at your word.

I'm surprised nobody's take so far is the WSJ mining rather buried Twitter replies for outrage. Genuinely.

But yeah, the thread should've stopped at "this isn't banning it, people need to stop nodding along to it like it is". I think even your reading of posture is going too far. So what if some people are happy about it? We've already established it's not banning anything. So why the allusion to censorship?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

But yeah, the thread should've stopped at "this isn't banning it, people need to stop nodding along to it like it is". I think even your reading of posture is going too far. So what if some people are happy about it? We've already established it's not banning anything. So why the allusion to censorship?

You answered your own question:

I'm surprised nobody's take so far is the WSJ mining rather buried Twitter replies for outrage. Genuinely.

 

[JPetroski]

@Gorbles did the WSJ invent the quotes? Now, you got me earlier by quite rightly pointing out that I'm annoyed about this due to my ideological viewpoints, but to go on and on pretending like these teachers are making these changes for anything other than their attempt at "saving the children" is just ignoring all the information available to you, I'm sorry.

Seriously, just google disrupt texts and poke around a bit. They aren't exactly hiding their rationale here. The folks quoted in the WSJ and other articles out there are quite clearly concerned that these texts represent some danger to impressionable young minds. So they're attempting to prevent those young minds from seeing it, at least on their watch.

Now, is what a group of SJW teachers do in Mass really national newsworthy? Nope, not at all. But this isn't a case of some of us being hoodwinked into believing something happened that didn't so much as a few of us being hoodwinked into giving a **** about something that's irrelevant to us in the first place. It's, essentially, "fake news."

 

[AmazonQueen]

Oh, for sure. Shakespeare was a playwright. One of the playwrights. But that doesn't necessarily have much application (at least from my experience). And drama for me was it's own subject. An elective, to borrow North American speak. I didn't do that personally. I know about the Globe, though my memory is probably more impacted by more recent watchings of Doctor Who than anything studied close to two decades ago at school.

And yeah, three times. I think one time was in primary school though (at the top end; just before high school. So 10 or 11 years old, and then repeated again not long after. And then again a few years after that). I don't think we did Macbeth, but that'd be the only one I remember (Scottish is big in my family, so it could be a family interest / memory and not school. Or it could be school). We certainly didn't do Twelth Night, the Tempest, or Midsummer's, for example. Everyone does Midsummer's! But not us. Anyhoo.

Is Romeo and Juliet a good story? It's a good story. There are plenty. We don't need to use it (and if you avoid using it for that particular lesson, you avoid the devil's advocacy of "but it was more normal at the time" kind of nonsense). A child is not worse off throughout their life because they didn't see it at least once. Or at least, no less than any other famous play, stage show or even film.


I'm well aware of it. My point is that Dickens is not the only person to raise such a thing. It is definitely not difficult to find good authors on the general topic.


Again, I'm well aware. This all came about because of claims of things that would be lost, if certain subjects were (hypothetically, mostly) not on a curriculum. Teaching English is not (just) the learning by rote of words. Though if that were useful, that can also be done!

I'm not saying "every school should stop teaching Shakespeare". My point is that the curriculum is a finite resource that is further compounded by teaching shortages and lack of investment at the local or regional level(s). You've never going to get depth unless a student carries it onto a level where depth and focus on particular, specialised subjects is the norm. At which point a general curriculum no longer applies. In a general curriculum, teachers can adapt as they see fit, and cover whatever they want to achieve the learning objectives set out. As evidenced by whomever in my English department really had a thing for Romeo and / or Juliet. Or maybe Mercutio, I dunno.


I'm surprised nobody's take so far is the WSJ mining rather buried Twitter replies for outrage. Genuinely.

But yeah, the thread should've stopped at "this isn't banning it, people need to stop nodding along to it like it is". I think even your reading of posture is going too far. So what if some people are happy about it? We've already established it's not banning anything. So why the allusion to censorship?

Shakespeare is much better taught as drama than as literature anyway, preferably with the chance for pupils to put on a production.
Same goes for any play really, just like poetry has to heard to be really appreciated. Also makes the subject less dry and academic.

One of the problems with the set text approach, especially if they are what will come up in examinations , is that they end up the only things studied.
Another, if too many works are on the set texts list, is that study of them becomes very superficial. The prescriptive approach our government took combined with pressure on schools to get good results has resulted in pupils often not reading whole works, just extracts.

https://www.tes.com/news/children-denied-reading-pleasure

 

[Gorbles]

@Gorbles did the WSJ invent the quotes? Now, you got me earlier by quite rightly pointing out that I'm annoyed about this due to my ideological viewpoints, but to go on and on pretending like these teachers are making these changes for anything other than their attempt at "saving the children" is just ignoring all the information available to you, I'm sorry.

Seriously, just google disrupt texts and poke around a bit. They aren't exactly hiding their rationale here. The folks quoted in the WSJ and other articles out there are quite clearly concerned that these texts represent some danger to impressionable young minds. So they're attempting to prevent those young minds from seeing it, at least on their watch.

Now, is what a group of SJW teachers do in Mass really national newsworthy? Nope, not at all. But this isn't a case of some of us being hoodwinked into believing something happened that didn't so much as a few of us being hoodwinked into giving a **** about something that's irrelevant to us in the first place. It's, essentially, "fake news."

I didn't say WSJ invented the quotes. I'm saying a large-scale publication going into the replies of Twitter threads is at best looking for outrage. Worse, it's painting a target on peoples' heads for expressing an opinion online. If this was some big huge social media platform superstar going off, sure, why not, they put themselves out there. Surfing a hashtag for a selection of tweets to paint a specific narrative, which is what the WSJ have done, is not that. If you want to characterise that as clear concern, that's your choice, but I definitely don't agree in the slightest. It's just another log on the fire for the "culture war" to me.

What do you even mean by "saving the children"? Should we not challenge our established curriculums to be more appropriate for the (ostensibly) better times in which we now live? This doesn't mean we need to lower any quality of the teaching or its materials. I'm confused as to why you feel the need to characterise this Disrupt Text movement so negatively. I mean, if it's as simple as "you don't like it", fair enough. I like it. Opinions have been exchanged. Am I attempting to make myself seem more moral than you? No. Teaching is complicated, and teacher-parent relationships are also complicated (as well as homeschooling in general). There are roughly three threads worth of topic in that sentence at least

There's a difference between not teaching something, and preventing the spread of something. There is a difference in updating a curriculum for more modern times, and "banning" anything. Culture war stuff. Like you said, "fake news". It is designed to harm whatever constructive aim Disrupt Texts may have. That's more than looking for outrage, in retrospect. Perhaps I should've gone more-in on the WSJ angle from the start, but hey, I got to talk about English a bit, and I'm a sucker for it. I did it as in-depth as I did at school for good reason, after all.

 

[JPetroski]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm going to struggle a bit as I'm working exclusively from a phone so I need to keep it briefer than your post deserves, but a few things:

Yes we basically just disagree/have different opinions. You suggest finding more appropriate texts. I dont think the old texts are inappropriate. I suspect we will not convince the other.

As to the culture war, I'm concerned you may think it's something folks just read about in the media that doesn't actually happen? They certainly egg it on, but at the end of the day they do that by serving up quotes and sound bites someone actually said.

And yes, there is a difference between not teaching something and "banning" something, but frankly I think some of the folks in this article would be perfectly fine with the latter if only it were achievable.

 

[Ajidica]

And yes, there is a difference between not teaching something and "banning" something, but frankly I think some of the folks in this article would be perfectly fine with the latter if only it were achievable.

I, for one, support the banning of teaching bad literature.

 

[bernie14]

Ok, padma says she was taken out of context. Here is one of her opinion pieces written in SLJ in June 2020.


.....Let’s actively add to shelves and reading lists, books that win awards celebrating excellence and honoring diversity, such as the Walter Award.....

Guess who won the Walter's Award in August of 2020?

 

[Gorbles]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm going to struggle a bit as I'm working exclusively from a phone so I need to keep it briefer than your post deserves, but a few things:

Yes we basically just disagree/have different opinions. You suggest finding more appropriate texts. I dont think the old texts are inappropriate. I suspect we will not convince the other.

As to the culture war, I'm concerned you may think it's something folks just read about in the media that doesn't actually happen? They certainly egg it on, but at the end of the day they do that by serving up quotes and sound bites someone actually said.

And yes, there is a difference between not teaching something and "banning" something, but frankly I think some of the folks in this article would be perfectly fine with the latter if only it were achievable.

I'm not saying what is in the article isn't necessarily what's happening (though we're mostly all agreed on the absence of "banning" things at this point I think). I just don't think it's a constructive framing (by the WSJ), or even good journalism honestly.

To your last, perhaps! I cannot speak for them. But that's casting a wide net on Twitter, you understand right? If people are fine with the outright banning of materials, and don't give a thought to the legislation that could arise from this, or the abuse that it could create, that's on them. But I will speak up when people are being mischaracterised as being such. And certainly, at least from their website, Disrupt Texts isn't necessarily Teacher #401 on Twitter. And Teacher #401 on Twitter isn't going around saying hateful things or the like. It's more nuanced than that.

 

[Patine]

I, for one, support the banning of teaching bad literature.

Supporting a ban with a purely subjective, judgement call word in it (bolded for reference). How could that NOT possibly be a recipe for abuse?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Supporting a ban with a purely subjective, judgement call word in it (bolded for reference). How could that NOT possibly be a recipe for abuse?

It's called a "curriculum."

 

[JPetroski]

To your last, perhaps! I cannot speak for them. But that's casting a wide net on Twitter, you understand right?

The only folks I have stuck in my net are the few quoted in a couple of articles I found

I'll agree with you though that its a crap article. You'll never find me defending our press (if you do, call for help, as something has gone wrong).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It's called a "curriculum."

We're in the midst of a curriculum dispute here in Alberta. The Minister of Education's only prior political experience was in serving on the Catholic School Board in my city. She has NO experience with the public school system, yet she rants and prattles and blathers on about how "public schools are immoral" and "public school teachers have an agenda" and her post-secondary cabinet colleague has yapped about how public schools teach "an immoral, radicalized ideology."

These are the people ultimately responsible for tossing out the previous curriculum that they blame on the NDP (but was really developed years ago by the Progressive Conservatives) and who want to change it to what the Minister's hand-picked "advisers" think would be preferable to teach the students of this province.

There was a huge hue and cry when it was revealed that they don't want to touch anything about the native residential schools for elementary students. The reason? "It's too sad." Many of the songs they thought students should know are actually racist or depict violence. I'm willing to bet that this bunch of 'advisers' wouldn't be happy with any Grade 12 class being taught The Handmaid's Tale, or even having it on the reading list (I can't speak to that personally, as I was already out of high school when it was published and it never came up in any of my college-level English courses).

Honestly, if I were a parent in this province and wanted my public school-attending child to have a well-rounded curriculum, I'd be home-schooling. Yes, many kids are being home-schooled during the pandemic, but the pandemic isn't causing this ridiculous new curriculum to be floated as a good idea.

 

[JPetroski]

What are native residential schools? Schools for indigenous folk?

 

[Arwon]

What are native residential schools? Schools for indigenous folk?

They were one of Canada's preferred tools of cultural genocide

Canadian governments and churches pursued a policy of “cultural genocide” against the country’s aboriginal people throughout the 20th century, according to an investigation into a long-suppressed history that saw 150,000 Native, or First Nations, children forcibly removed from their families and incarcerated in residential schools rife with abuse.

After seven years of hearings, and testimony from thousands of witnesses, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on Tuesday for a new era of forgiveness and understanding even as it exposed the cultural and personal devastation inflicted by the residential schools policy in excruciating detail.

“These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will,” the commission’s final report declares.

“The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”

The Australian version was basically the same objectives, impact, etc, but the forcibly removed children were placed with white families instead of in "schools".

 

[Birdjaguar]

Perhaps I should be more thoughtful about quoting WSJ articles here.....

 

[Arwon]

Would we really lose anything if we just banned newspaper op-eds

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The Australian version was basically the same objectives, impact, etc, but the forcibly removed children were placed with white families instead of in "schools".

Canada did that too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop

We also treat them like utter crap. One band is only just getting clean drinking water...even though they're pretty much in the middle of VANCOUVER: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/semiahmoo-fir...xpects-clean-drinking-water-in-2021-1.5243640

 

[Valka D'Ur]

They were one of Canada's preferred tools of cultural genocide



The Australian version was basically the same objectives, impact, etc, but the forcibly removed children were placed with white families instead of in "schools".

They did that, too. Children were literally kidnapped in the middle of the night and sold to white Canadians, Americans, and Europeans in black market "adoptions." This is known as "The Sixties Scoop" (it happened in the '60s)... and this is something not taught in schools. I had no idea it had ever happened until a bunch of news articles came out a few years ago.

 

[JPetroski]

Would we really lose anything if we just banned newspaper op-eds

What the private press has done with their freedom is one of the more compelling arguments for communism.