Originally published at National Catholic Register
The pressure to remove William Shakespeare’s work from the curriculum is a symptom of a deeper ideological problems in the culture
The public school system in the United States is the very proof of G. K. Chesterton’s prophecy that the “coming peril” facing culture was “standardization by a low standard.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the removal of Shakespeare from the classroom.
A report in a recent issue of School Library Journal encapsulated the arrogant and ignorant rationale for such iconoclasm, epitomized in the claim that “‘Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir.” The final word in this litany of postmodern sins, misogynoir, apparently refers to a hatred of black women.
The problem with such a sweeping dismissal of Shakespeare’s oeuvre is that it illustrates the pride and prejudice of the person saying it. There is no way that the person who uttered this dismissive judgment has ever read Shakespeare in any way that conforms with the moral and philosophical dimension of the works. It is ignorance and the arrogance which is the cankered fruit of such ignorance. It is pride and the prejudice that always
