A headline published Monday by the Tampa Bay Times states that “Hillsborough schools cut back on Shakespeare, citing new Florida rules.” According to the story, “English teachers in Hillsborough County are preparing lessons for the new school year with only excepts from William Shakespeare’s works.”
The reason for the change is in part to expose students to a greater variety of writers and styles, Hillsborough County schools spokeswoman Tanya Arja told National Review in an emailed statement. “We redesigned our instructional guides for teachers because of revised state standards and new state exams that will cover a variety of books and writing styles,” she wrote. “Instead of 2 novels read in their entirety, students will read one full novel plus excerpts from 5-7 other novels and B.E.S.T. texts.”
But the decision, she said, was also made by “taking new state laws into consideration.” The law she is referring to, she said, is the state’s newly expanded Parental Rights in Education Act.
But state education leaders are pushing back against the notion that the state law should prohibit schools from assigning Shakespeare’s plays. “The Florida Department of Education in no way believes Shakespeare should be removed from Florida classrooms,” spokeswoman Cassie Palelis told National Review, noting that eight works by Shakespeare are included in the B.E.S.T. standards as recommended readings.
Other B.E.S.T. recommended readings for high-school students include books and writings by George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Geoffrey Chaucer, Cicero, Plato, and John Locke, as well as books from the Bible, important historical documents like the Federalist Papers, and poetry by writers like Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost. There are more than 120 recommendations for grades nine through 12.
The expanded Parental Rights in Education Act prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity to children from prekindergarten through eighth grade. If the instruction is provided to high-school students, it must be “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” The bill, HB 1069, also allows for parents or residents to officially object to and challenge school materials that are pornographic, depict or describe sexual conduct, are not suited to student needs, or are inappropriate for the grade level or age group they’re being used in.
Attending a church picnic is a sign of a theocratic state in leftist circles:
Apparently, Laser’s distaste for religion extends so far that she criticizes Oklahoma’s former attorney general for the entirely unremarkable and thoroughly American claim that “there’s a God who has values and endows us or imbues us with those values that are not granted to us by the government.” Those who place such a statement outside the pale of publicly accepted opinions to be transmitted to the next generation — and sue religious Americans who disagree — are neither defenders of the pluralism or authentic Americanism they are so keen to invoke. They are just secularists who wish to impose their secularism on religious communities. Something deeply un-American is under way in the state of Oklahoma, indeed.
A man rammed a car onto a sidewalk Thursday in the South Korean city of Seongnam, then stepped out of the vehicle and began stabbing people at a shopping mall, leaving at least 14 people wounded.
Just hours after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday called for “ultra-strong” law enforcement measures in response to that attack, police found themselves chasing the suspect in another stabbing incident at a high school in Daejeon city.
Cho Byeong-tae, an official at the Daejeon metropolitan police department, said the attack at Songchon High School left at least one teacher hurt. He did not identify the victim or provide details about the victim’s health.
At least five people were hurt by the car and nine others were stabbed during Thursday’s attack in Seongnam that occurred in a crowded leisure district near a subway, according to Yoon Sung-hyun, an official from the southern Gyeonggi provincial police department.
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