Florida teachers looking to expose high-school freshmen to some of the great works of literature and history should consider assigning William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or maybe the St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V.
MacBeth and Midsummer’s Night Dream, two other Shakespeare classics would be good choices for sophomores. Julius Caesar would likely be good reading material for juniors, and Hamlet and King Lear would be appropriate for high-school seniors.
That is according to Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, or B.E.S.T standards, a framework for Florida educators to help them “nurture students by immersing them in the study of the great works of literature, history, and the arts.”
But even though the standards are clear that works of Shakespeare are appropriate for a “meaningful curriculum that ‘uplifts the soul,’” one Florida school district will no longer assign full Shakespeare plays, in part because of “new state laws” designed to protect students from materials that are pornographic, not age appropriate, or that depict or describe sexual conduct.
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.
In an email exchange, Arja did not specify who was behind the instructional change in Hillsborough County, and she did not specify any portions of Shakespeare’s works that could potentially run afoul of state law. One high-school teacher told the Times that there is “some raunchiness in Shakespeare” because “that’s what sold tickets during his time.”
“First and foremost, we have not excluded Shakespeare from our high school curriculum,” Arja wrote. Students will still have the physical books to read excerpts from in class, she wrote, and Shakespeare’s works are still available to students in media centers across the district.
“As state standards evolve, we adjust curriculum guides to ensure standards are supported in the classroom,” Arja wrote.
Patricia Rendon, a Hillsborough school board member, told National Review that the idea that students are being assigned more excerpts as opposed to whole plays or novels is “not new.”
“This process of teaching segments of our different novels, and not just Shakespeare, but even some of our other classic novels, actually started a couple cycles ago,” said Rendon, who was backed by Republican governor Ron DeSantis in her election last year. “I don’t know why they’re highlighting it now. I don’t know why they’re making it about Shakespeare. I remember personally, at one point in time my daughter came home and they were reading a portion of Hamlet, not the whole book.”
When asked if she thought assigning Shakespeare’s plays to high-school students could run afoul of state law, Rendon said she didn’t want to make a blanket statement or second guess district leaders. Course content should be reviewed against state law and standards, she said.
“People have a right to read what they want to read,” she said, adding that, “we are already teaching Shakespeare. We are already teaching different elements of different novels and different plays. It is already part of our curriculum.”
This dustup over Shakespeare is just the latest dispute over Florida education laws and teaching standards.
In January, teachers in at least two Florida school districts were directed by district leaders to remove their classroom libraries – or to completely cover them – under the largely unfounded belief that they could be jailed for having unvetted books on their shelves.
A law passed last year and a newly-approved state rule require trained media specialists or school librarians to vet and approve all school reading materials and to publish a list of all media-center and classroom books on their school’s website. The law was passed after parents across the country raised concerns about sexually explicit school library books.
Last month, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats and left-wing commentators tried to drag Florida over the coals for a portion of the state’s new African-American history standards that include instruction on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Harris and others claimed that Florida was trying to whitewash the horrors of slavery by suggesting that some black people benefited from it. Members of the workgroup that designed the standards told National Review that their intention was to show that people who were enslaved were resilient and they developed skills to better their lives despite slavery.
In both cases, supporters of the Florida teaching standards claimed that critics were intentionally misrepresenting the standards and state law for political purposes.