In yet another attempt to pretend that hate is not divisive the enlightening tale the Tempest has been banned by the Tucson School Board.
The Tucson Unified School District released the titles of its banned books on Friday, a lengthy list that removes every textbook dealing with Mexican-American history — and even Shakespeare.
The book ban is part of a curriculum change to avoid “biased, political and emotionally charged” teaching, CNN reported.
“The Tempest,” one of the playwright’s classics, is among the books removed, as teachers were urged to stay away from any works where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,” the website Salon reported.
The school faces a multimillion-dollar fine if it doesn’t comply with the ban.
With enlightening subversive prose like this who could blame them?
CALIBAN
This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in't, and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee
And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' the island. (1.2.3)
I can't help but think the regressives in the school board can not tell the difference between the character Caliban and a theocratic group with a similar name.
Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in't which
good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deservedly confined into this rock,
Who hadst deserved more than a prison. (1.2.46)
The notes to this piece are probably not far off the mark for the intent of the school board:
Some editions of the play attribute this rant against Caliban to Prospero. Others assign the speech to Miranda. Either way, the point is pretty clear. Here, the speaker suggests that because Caliban had no language of his own when Prospero and Miranda arrived on the island, he somehow deserves to be a slave "confined into this rock." Scholars often point out that this is the same kind of rationale European colonizers used to enslave new world inhabitants.
3:46 PM PT: H/T to Ranton
Civil Disobedience (1993), by H. D. Thoreau
The list is below in the comments.
4:05 PM PT: