"Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."
This passage from MacBeth caused quite a stir last week when leftist elites thought Sen. Ted Cruz misquoted it, leading to several hilarious self-owns of people who don't know their literature.
Well it turns out more generation of Americans may grow up without learning the collective wisdom of Western civilization as more and more educators under the banner "Disrupt Texts" are calling for Shakespeare to be cancelled entirely.
"This is about White supremacy and colonization," said Disrupt Texts founder Lorena German. "Everything about the fact that he was a man of his time is problematic about his plays. We cannot teach Shakespeare responsibly and not disrupt the ways people are characterized and developed."
Lorena also chairs the National Council of Teachers of English Anti-Racism Committee, because of course she does.
Here's the list of books Disrupt Texts considers better than the entire anthology of Western literature over the last 3,000 years:
Amanda McGregor, another educator who works as a Minnesotan librarian, wrote last month that Shakespeare should be cancelled for more enlightened modern tomes, presumably those that adhere to the approved ideological stances of the woke mafia.
"Shakespeare's work is full of problematic and outdated ideas, lots of misogyny, racism, homophobia, class discrimination, anti-Semitism, misogyny."
Remember, it's a short leap to go from "let's get rid of classic literature in the classroom" to burning all "unapproved" literature altogether.
"There is nothing to be gained from Shakespeare that couldn't be gotten from exploring the works of other authors," said Michigan writing center director Jeffrey Austin. "It's worth pushing back against the idea that somehow Shakespeare stands alone as a solitary genius when every culture has transcendent writers that don't get included in our curriculum or classroom libraries."
Similarly, Connecticut English teacher Liz Matthews says she tosses out Shakespeare in favor of books that better represent her black and Hispanic students.
"I replaced Romeo and Juliet with The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros last year, and Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds this year. Simply put, the authors and characters of the two new books look and sound like my students, and they can make realistic connections. Representation matters."
Yes, representation matters more than wisdom, talent, or history. Oh, unless you're a conservative black person. We wouldn't want them getting any ideas that they can think differently from the approved list of opinions.
The House On Mango Street and Long Way Down were both published in the last few decades. Romeo and Juliet was published over 400 years ago.
But yeah, same diff, whatevs.
