Most of us remember those high school English classes where we were forced to read William Shakespeare.
Some people liked it. Most did not. If you were one of those who did not enjoy Shakespeare, you might be surprised to hear that some high school teachers don’t even like Shakespeare ?themselves.
Sacramento high school teacher Dana Dusbiber spoke against teaching Shakespeare in a Washington Post education blog. She argued Shakespeare does not fit her ethnically diverse classroom. “The reliance on ?Shakespeare is something I find odd,” Dusbiber said.
She explained in her essay Shakespeare’s views of the world were outdated and his white-man background did not contribute to other socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.
In fact, in the 2013-14 school year, 96 percent of the students at the high school where she taught — Luther Burbank High School — were nonwhite.
From the state data, 81 percent of those students were eligible for reduced-price lunches based on their household income. Thus, Dusbiber chose to replace Shakespeare in her curriculum with texts by other authors like Isabel Allende, Sharon Draper, Francisco Jimenez and Gary Soto.
But Dusbiber’s dislike for Shakespeare is not supported by other fellow teachers. Christine Baker, who teaches a few miles away from Dusbiber at Sacramento New Technology High School, does not believe that Shakespeare should be removed from high school curricula.
Instead, she tries to make Shakespeare more appealing to her students by modernizing his works and creating more interactive lessons. She says that attempting to remove Shakespeare from the high school curriculum would be “completely ?preposterous.”
In response to such criticism, Dusbiber has since clarified her views on Shakespeare were personal opinions non-reflective of the views of Luther Burbank High School as a whole.
Nonetheless, she has a valid point. If Shakespeare’s works are so socially and culturally removed from the modern world, then teaching them to high school students would be of little benefit. Yet, it’s debatable whether individual high school teachers should have say to what is taught in their classrooms.
After all, public high school education is not a personal matter left to the teacher’s own prerogative. While Dusbiber has a point, completely removing Shakespeare from her classroom curriculum may not be the best choice.
As an English major myself, I believe that there are many ways to read literature. Dusbiber’s interpretation of Shakespeare as having only “one white man’s view of life as he lived it” is just one of the many possible readings. A good teacher will present materials with minimal personal biases, leaving it up to students to decide whether they can relate to it or not.
After all, cultural relevance is only one of the many aspects that contributes to the joy and merits of reading literature.
nywu@indiana.edu
