Calif. Teacher Refuses to Teach Shakespeare Because He’s ‘Old’ and ‘White’

15 Jun, 2015 by Warner Todd Huston

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We have now arrived at a point where liberal “teachers” in our system of miseducation are refusing to teach about the history or works of even the most accomplished persons from history if they are old white people.

This is what a literature teacher in California is saying. The single most famous English writer (and writer in English, for that matter) is William Shakespeare. But according to teacher Dana Dusbiber of Scaramento, he shouldn’t be taught in schools because he’s an old white, British man. Dusbiber is a white teacher from Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, CA.

Dana Dusbiber, who teaches English in Sacramento, says she avoids Hamlet and all the rest because her minority students shouldn’t be expected to study a “a long-dead, British guy” (Dusbiber herself is white). And while Shakespeare is widely regarded as the premier writer of the English language, able to timelessly portray themes central to the human experience, Dusbiber says he only is regarded that way because “some white people” ordained it and he can easily be replaced.

“Why not teach the oral tradition out of Africa, which includes an equally relevant commentary on human behavior?” She suggests. “Why not teach translations of early writings or oral storytelling from Latin America or Southeast Asia other parts of the world? Many, many of our students come from these languages and traditions … perhaps we no longer have the time to study the Western canon that so many of us know and hold dear.”

To bolster her case for dumping the Bard, Dusbiber says that minority students, like those who dominate her own classroom, deserve to study their own cultures rather than being exposed to “Eurocentrism.” But at the same time, she takes the exact opposite position for whites, saying school should be a place for them to explore cultures other than their own.

Dana Dusbiber, Luther Burbank High School

So, teach “the oral tradition” of Africans who haven’t built any great civilizations, didn’t advance philosophy, science, or medicine, teach some culture that didn’t even bother to create a written language… that is much better than teaching about anyone who is “old” and “white”?

This is the joke our system of miseducation has become.