Orlando: Students in a Florida school district will be reading only excerpts from William Shakespeare’s plays rather than the full texts under redesigned curriculum guides developed, in part, to take into consideration the state’s new law that restricts classroom materials whose content can be deemed sexual.
The changes to the Hillsborough County Public Schools’ curriculum guides were made with Florida’s new legislation limiting classroom materials that “contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct” in mind. Other reasons included revised state standards and an effort to get students to read a wide variety of books for new state exams, the school district said this week.
Too raunchy for Florida? Callum Linnane and Sharni Spencer dance in the Australian Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet. Parts of the book have been censored by schools in Florida.Credit: Simon Schluter
Several Shakespeare plays use suggestive puns and innuendo, and it is implied that the protagonists have had premarital sex in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare’s books will be available for borrowing at media centres at schools, said the district, which covers the Tampa area.
“There’s some raunchiness in Shakespeare,” Joseph Cool, a literacy teacher, told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper. “Because that’s what sold tickets during his time.”
“I think the rest of the nation – no, the world – is laughing at us. Taking Shakespeare in its entirety out because the relationship between Romeo and Juliet is somehow exploiting minors is just absurd,” the Gaither High School teacher said.
Portrait of William Shakespeare, artist unknown.Credit: Bloomberg
But the district’s statement said “first and foremost, we have not excluded Shakespeare from our high school curriculum. Students will still have the physical books to read excerpts in class”.
“Curriculum guides are continually reviewed and refined throughout the year to align with state standards and current law.”
The decision in Tampa is the latest fallout from laws passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature and championed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis over the past two years. The first law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, was passed last year and prohibited classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in lower grades.
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