OT: Here we go again! Teachers Banning Books...

https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/12/31/teacher-proud-removing-homer/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
Massachusetts teacher says she is “very proud” to have removed Homer’s classic from school curriculum

Shea Martin on her Twitter account, that has now been restricted to those who do not follow her already, said in June: “Be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash).” Heather Levine, a ninth-grade English teacher at Lawrence High School in Massachusetts, replied: “Hahaha …. Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!”

Did you hear that? "The Odyssey" according to an actual "teacher" (hate to use that title when speaking to such a tool) is "trash"! I'm really not sure how much more pathetic this can get. Actually, I'm a bit scared I said that. Is such idiocy common in the UK, other countries? Or is it restricted primarily to the good ol' US of A? :/

Oh, and next up on the inquisition's list is... To Kill A Mockingbird
SIGH...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/the-necessity-of-to-kill-a-mockingbird/

many classics were written more than 70 years ago

No kidding.

Well you only need to see how many voted for trump on one-side and then read all the 'woke' stuff on the other... America is a comic nightmare of both extremes simultaneously... and this from the country that gave us Melville, Dickinson (though isn't she sex'd up on Netflix now?), Pound, TSE, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Roth, Sylvia Plath...mind you lots of them left didn't they

Lots of teacher bashing articles by the right-wing papers in the UK though, often from the Murdoch owned press. Now I wonder who owns the WSJ?

Oh. Quel surprise.

This has nothing to do with the Folio Society, does it? I don't think putting OT in front of a topic is any reason for this sort of random tabloid nonsense.

>4 red_guy: This is about books and censorship. That indirectly affects the Folio Society and everyone. There are those of us that do want to have a meaningful discussion about this and not just bring up politics as an excuse to ignore censorship as you did. Please, just do us favor and ignore this thread.
Oh, and I find it quite incredulous that someone could consider censorship "random tabloid nonsense" but I suppose nothing should surprise me these days honestly...

The far right and the far left are both illiberal (in the pure sense of the word) and each has lists of books they want banned for various reasons. What's really head-spinning is when the lists intersect and they both want the *same* book banned but for different reasons!

Well this thread and the articles it links are incredibly misleading and uninformed.

First, removing something from the curriculum is not "banning books", it's changing the curriculum. Any kid that wants to can still check it out from the library.

Second, Disrupt texts is about finding a way to include kids and representations in literature that have not previously been included. Traditional classics are overwhelmingly white and male, but the student body is not. Additionally, when you're dealing with something like The Odyssey, as a teacher, you're probably stuck with one of the stodgy 19th c. translations in public domain instead of something more contemporary like Fagles.

Those of us who are teachers have a lot of things to consider about the books we teach. If you truly believe that literature only deserves to be taught if old and written by white people, I don't know what to tell you except that you need to read some pedagogy, actually learn about the profession, and maybe consider some of your own biases.

But people probably won't. Still let's at least consider the fact that the people who are screaming in these articles aren't educators and the people doing the things that are prompting these articles are highly qualified educators. Who has the more informed opinion here and who's writing clickbait with the most incendiary quotes they can find?

I'm very glad that my son asked to borrow my copy of this "trash" a while back so he could read it in his spare time. Sometimes, students know more than their teachers. This is ridiculous, but as lgreen666 said, this country has become a comic nightmare.

OK, just a couple of questions:

Why on earth would an english teacher be teaching an ancient greek text (presumably in translation) to 14 year olds? Wouldn't an example of english literature (and I believe there are many to choose from) be more appropriate?

Is choosing not to teach a book 'banning'? Or is it just choosing something else.

This isn't about censorship is it? It's about mock outrage at vague and probably apocryphal events, interpreted anonymously to provoke pearl clutching.

>9 red_guy:

Why on earth would an english teacher be teaching an ancient greek text (presumably in translation) to 14 year olds? Wouldn't an example of english literature (and I believe there are many to choose from) be more appropriate?

Because in the United States, for some reason unbeknownst to me, the term "English" is used for that part of the curriculum that teaches literature, whatever its source. When I was in high school, our "English" class read Homer and Dante, among others.

>9 red_guy:

Preach.

I can't speak to the first link, but the other two are from right-wing publications. They have an agenda and they write their articles to forward it.

>10 lilithcat: Goodness, how odd.

We might get a flash of middle english with a passage of Chaucer, and I had Book II of the Aeneid as a set text when I did Latin in secondary school, but that's as far as it went. Dante? That's weird. What would the lesson objectives look like, I wonder?

a) To show pupils the impossibility of conveying terza rima in English
b) To undermine Catholic teaching about Hell by showing its invention in literature
c) To compare Guelphs and Ghibellines with Playstation and XBox fanbois and other modern factions

That would do...

>7 Jason461: She did not just "remove" or "replace" - she called The Odyssey "trash"! That right there says that this person is not fit to teach. Instead of letting students learn for themselves, discuss, educate... this "teacher" is so biased and full of political agenda. While I fully agree that students should NOT learn books only written by "white people" - and for the record Ancient Greeks never thought of themselves as "white" or "non-white" that is a construct from around the Early Modern Period - there are numerous other books on the guillotine as I noted (you seemed to conveniently ignore that point), including "To Kill a Mockingbird". Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University says
Canceling Homer is not virtue-signaling. It is broadcasting ignorance.
https://www.providencejournal.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/01/09/opinion-hanso...
I do agree. If you really think it's okay to call a universally regarded work of literature that has greatly influenced millions of people over thousands of years as "trash", well, I don't know what to tell you except that you need to read some pedagogy, actually learn about the profession, and maybe consider some of your own biases. Yes, I did copy your line verbatim, a quick answer to most anything is it not?

>9 red_guy: Oh it is absolutely about censorship. "It's about mock outrage at vague and probably apocryphal events" Honestly not even sure what you're trying to say.

>12 red_guy:

That honestly made me laugh. Thanks! :)

>7 Jason461:

*like*

>12 red_guy:

To compare Guelphs and Ghibellines with Playstation and XBox fanbois and other modern factions

Well, not in the mid-'60s, which is when I went to high school!

>13 astropi:

As noted, I said they had chosen the most incendiary quotes they could find. In any case, the ideas behind the movement are sound even if the teacher perhaps went too far with her quote. And it is still not "book banning" as it is portrayed in the texts (speaking of ignoring things).

I lumped TKAM in with old books by white people. Which it is. I love TKAM. My son's middle name is Atticus. But there are other books, by black authors, that address racism better than it does.

But do you see what happened? The whole point of Disrupt text is to encourage looking at literature from a different viewpoint and, instead, a couple of right-wing articles found just the right quote to get us arguing about something else.

>10 lilithcat: I’d argue that many classics in English translation have become English classics.

But yeah, “Literature”—or maybe “humanitas”—would probably be more accurate and descriptive. (I vividly remember reading Medea in high school English class.)

>16 Jason461: I certainly agree with looking at literature from different viewpoints. 100%. But, I did look into this particular case and I have to say I fully disagree with the teachers here. I can't see everything, since the two teachers blocked their accounts. However, based on what I did read (and NOT just the Washington Post, etc) I think they are certainly in the wrong here. If you're learning about Western literature, I think starting with Homer is perfectly legitimate. I remember doing so when I was in 9th grade. That said, students should be exposed to numerous voices including Native Americans, Black, Jewish... etc. Again, fully agreed. And you may actually be right, perhaps The Odyssey was just "removed" from the curriculum, but what was it replaced with? What is the course? Regardless that does not excuse someone from calling it "trash" - I really think for reasons I already stated that such labels are highly inappropriate and dangerous. Also the teachers and school district are clearly facing serious scrutiny, so I'm willing to bet they're consulting their lawyers as to what exactly say and do...

Is your son's middle name taken from TKAM? :)
And again, I also agree there are better accounts such as Twelve Years A Slave. Still, all that said can you imagine finishing high school and not reading any Homer in any of your literature classes?

Western literature starts with Homer - it's a fundamental text. How is "Lord of the flies" a more appropriate choice?

Also, US really needed not remove Homer from a random school to reflect its decadence - there's far more obvious indicators...

>19 bacchus.:

How is "Lord of the flies" a more appropriate choice?

We read both Homer and Lord of the Flies.

Context is everything and there was very little here (although I couldn’t read the WSJ article).

Age
Class ability
Even what the class is.

If it’s bottom set, 11 year old children trying to inspire an interest in literature it certainly is trash, pointless, worthless and a waste of everyone’s time. I speak from personal experience having to read Romeo and Juliet at 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 because we had an exam on it at 16. I had some learning difficulties and so in my school the lower classes had to read the same books again, and again, and again so that it was drilled in. Higher sets had some variety. I hated reading till my twenties, went to University a little later, got a very good degrees, PhD, Ivy League postdoctoral fellowships and now an associate Professor. Not bad for a school failure - or was the teaching the problem?

There is so much great literature to choose from that schools should be changing books every few years and tailoring them to inspire specific classes rather than teaching to dogma.

This "OT" seems to be a good an opportunity to plug a new bookish podcast my daughter is launching that will discuss just these types of topics: how the vaguely and legally-suspect terms of "obscenity" and "trash" and the like have been applied to books through the ages. And censorship of books has been around as long as books have and will never go away, and neither will the fight against it. When the courts won't go their way, they achieve their aims through restricting access.

Her podcast is more focused on censorship of sexuality (Homer gets a pass there, at least, except for some mild homoeroticism) as her specialty is women's studies and her thesis was on Feminine Pornography. First episode will be up this month on a brief history of cases from L'Ecole des filles, Fanny Hill, Naked Lunch, Tropic of Cancer, and Ulysses. First book to be discussed in detail will be The Awakening.

If you're interested in this topics and podcasts are your thing, check out https://www.ofprurientinterest.com/ (TW: sex and sexuality, of course)

And to fade from "OT" to on-topic, I would love to see the Awakening from the Folio Society or another fine or private press.

(Edited to insert trigger warning on link. Also apologize if this is too "pluggy" for some but I believe it is literary and pertinent to this discussion)

As for why the teachers have locked their accounts, maybe they simply don’t want the abuse that women on the internet get whenever they upset someone and end up in the papers.

Well fancy ..... look what I found on my very first search. The Twitter posts from Ms Heather Levine, the teacher concerned: -

(1/5) Earlier today, I learned that my name was included in a WSJ article. This article included me without my knowledge or consent; I was not interviewed by the author, and the article includes severe misrepresentations of my words. To be clear: I am 100% against the banning

— Heather Levine (@MrsHLevine) December 28, 2020

(2/5) of any books, and my school did not ban any texts, to my knowledge. That is an assumption the author of the article made, and it is factually incorrect. It was simply our 9th grade ELA team’s decision last year to reimagine many of the units in our curriculum to best meet

— Heather Levine (@MrsHLevine) December 28, 2020

(3/5) the needs of our students. One of the units we decided not to use moving forward included Homer’s Odyssey. It was not a blanket school- or district-wide decision and any teacher, including myself, would still be more than welcome to teach from the text. As you can imagine,

— Heather Levine (@MrsHLevine) December 28, 2020

(4/5) this year almost all of our curriculum needed to be reshaped even after the initial planning we did in May once we realized virtual learning would continue. But what I most strongly want to reiterate is that no books were or will be banned from my school or classroom. The

5/5) many hateful messages I have received from complete strangers as a result of this misrepresentation have left me feeling quite sad, vulnerable, and frustrated. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this and understand the truth.

— Heather Levine (@MrsHLevine) December 28, 2020

>13 astropi: Sorry if my post was difficult to understand. In essence it was that ... newspapers make stuff up.

>24 red_guy: thanks it's good to hear her side of the story. I do have to say that 1: a newspaper does NOT need someone's consent to discuss them or anything that is "newsworthy" - that, she should know. 2: the WSJ claims they did contact Levine but was told her (the reporter's) inquiry was “invasive.” so that right there is contradictory.
Regardless, you are right, unfortunately newspapers do (sometimes) make stuff up. If the author really conflated "banned" and replaced, that is not acceptable. All that said, I still remain adamant that in a public setting calling The Odyssey "trash" and gloating about removing it from the curriculum is rather asinine at best. Still, absolutely no one should receive threats because of anything like this. All in all, it sounds like things were definitely taken a bit out of context and blown out of proportion.

I’ve not read all the posts above but changing curriculum is not remotely the same as banning a book. As a teacher, changing curriculum literally happens every year. As far as being upset because a teacher thinks a classic book is trash, who cares? Everyone has an opinion and I’m not going to let hers upset me.

Book banning is obsolete. Why not programmed illiteracy (brainware) where you suddenly forget how to read whenever you encounter an unsafe book?

Lot of unnecessary histrionics in this thread.

Apparently the irony of comparing this situation to some Orwellian attempt at censorship, while at the same time policing the opinions of others- a teacher is free to think whatever she wants about The Odyssey, and yes, even express those opinions- is lost on some.

>28 SolerSystem:

Eh, the criticism seems fair to me since kids are forced to go to school (in practice, few can afford to homeschool or send to private school). It's no longer a matter of opinion if you're penalizing people under the law for not accepting a certain curriculum. I've also known many teachers. Few of them have ever been really free to set their own curriculum, so I think it's reasonable to assume that removing an ancient classic and school staple like The Odyssey from the curriculum took a concentrated effort. Granted, most of the teachers I've known taught in big cities. I don't know how it is in smaller places.

Personally I think kids should choose their own reading lists. More kids might actually learn to enjoy reading. The only requirement should be that they should be able to write an essay explaining, coherently, why they chose to read what they read.

>3 lgreen666:

Wasn't Pound himself politically extreme?

I don’t see anything wrong with a teacher choosing her own texts to teach out of the hundreds or thousands to choose from. University professors in all subject areas (even astronomy) choose textbooks compatible with their personal interests, specialties, and biases.

I recall that my 10th grade English teacher preferred not to teach Moby Dick and chose House of the Seven Gables instead because it was more to her liking. But she didn’t discourage us from reading Moby and writing a report about it (and I did).

Most American schools devote one year to American literature, one to English (British) literature, and one to world literature in translation. My world literature teacher taught several of the Greek dramas rather than Homer. There is nothing wrong with that, because you can’t teach everything and there is a whole world to cover in 9 months.

If like me you have been worrying about the wisdom (even sanity) of confronting the average disengaged group of 14year olds with those twenty four books of Homer's classical greek masterpiece, either in the original or translation by Pope, Butler, Fagles et al., then worry no more.

A quick look online at U.S. 9th grade teaching plans for the Odyssey unit, reveals that at this age the poppets do not confront the actual text itself, but rather take a brisk canter round the plot followed by chats about heroes, gods and goddesses, journeys and the like before jumping into making travel brochures and board games, watching a bit of Disney's Hercules, making and ordering timeline cards etc., and there is an NBC miniseries which can also be useful. Six whole weeks of this, apparently.

So we are talking about learning about the plot of the Odyssey rather than anything much else. Coverage and general knowledge are the aims here, and it all seems to have as much relevance to the poem as Super Mario Odyssey. As a former teacher (admittedly mostly 3-4 year olds, but with some experience of most ages) I can't see a great deal of value here. If Mrs Levine did indeed call this unit trash, then I can't say I would disagree.

Nevertheless, I do wonder what replaced the Odyssey unit? Given the appetite for works of epic scope, maybe a quick spot of Proust with a 'How long can YOU stay in bed?' element and cake-based home assignments? Distance learning sewn up there ...

>32 red_guy:

If Mrs Levine did indeed call this unit trash

Thank you for taking the pains to give us a more accurate picture of the situation. In particular I'd like to emphasise that whatever she may have said that was uncomplimentary, she likely wasn't talking about Homer but some modified, worked-over etc. version, plus/minus additional teaching material etc.

Not the first time that teachers have been completely and utterly misrepresented in the press, and won't be the last. In fact, it's rare to see an accurate report.

If you truly believe that literature only deserves to be taught if old and written by white people,
Do we know what colour Homer was? (And please don't say yellow!).

Still, all that said can you imagine finishing high school and not reading any Homer in any of your literature classes?
Yes I can! I certainly didn't even though I studied literature to A-level (17 years old) and "I don't think it did me any harm", although I do think that we should have read wider than just English lit (taught as part of English). However, we did read some good stuff (although I hated Lord of the Flies at that stage!). First came to Homer in my twenties.

Hysteria is easy to incite from inflammatory media articles handing out pitchforks and targets. It just takes some level headed thinking and research as red guy demonstrated to reveal the fallacies are at the surface. It is worrying how far this discerning eye has been shrouded in current times with the over saturation of news sources bombarding headlines and claims with rarely any facts or diligent sources. In University last year in the course I attend one of the subjects focused on this and an article from the Australian government on illicit drugs was bursting at the seems with fallacies and unsubstantiated claims with flat out lies and misquotes from scientists and corporate bodies. None the less more than half the students in the report could not detect them or I guess to bother to research or look at the original sources and turned in papers on the legitimacy of the article thinking that was the point of the exercise.

The writers of the article in discussion seem to have met their KPIs nicely, and even managed to get a few devotees in a tizzy. Bravo!

Speaking as a teacher in Germany:

The curriculum is decided on the state level, teachers can then make a certain degree of individual decisions for younger classes, with the exam classes a majority of the decisions are again made at the state level. With regard to what you might call world literature, there have been extreme cuts, which I find very frustrating. Those are at least partly connected to the influence of business / industry, which find literature unnecessary, and a year being removed from one type of school, which saves the state money but has direct consequences for how much you can teach. One of the first consequences for the curriculum was that reading an ancient Greek tragedy (in German translation) in grade 11 was done away with. It's not obligatory anymore and the curriculum is so full with other things that you can't do it voluntarily either. A bit later, the recommendation to read translations or re-writings of a few passages from the Odyssey was also removed. (You always had a choice, most teachers and books chose the Odyssey.) Instead, dealing with Medieval German (highly complicated language-wise) and passages from the Nibelungenlied was moved from grade 11 down to grade 7 or 8 (usually 7), when students are rather too young for this. It certainly isn't censorship, nobody banned ancient Greek literature or the origins of European literature in Germany. But the practical effect is that German students now get zero supported access to what is, in the end, not that easy to deal with all on your own with no experience or help whatsoever. The majority aren't likely to ever take a look at these texts on their own. To me it's a crying shame and a loss.

>34 Willoyd:

Homer didn't see colour...

>38 Crypto-Willobie:
There's no real evidence that Homer (if he existed) -- was blind; it's an assumption based on a character in the poem who in any case was blinded as an adult.

>39 Jayked: can you point to a line number?

My understanding is also that Homer may or may not have been blind, but that the figure of the blind poet was a cultural trope, rather than based on the content of the works.

It seems plausible that, if there was a singular historical Homer, the poet could have been the origin of this stock type (and actually blind) or just an example of it (sort of like the caricature of the Monopoly fat cat tycoon).

Pragmatically, being a poet of an oral tradition would be an adaptive line of work for a blind person in Ancient Greece, so I wouldn’t dismiss the assumption as totally ungrounded, even if there isn’t any strong documentary evidence.

>39 Jayked:

It is indeed a vexed question as to whether the Iliad was written by Homer or by another poet of the same name...

>6 whytewolf1: Can we agree that no book should be banned?

>11 Jason461: Calling the Wall Street Journal a right-wing publication is nonsense. It maintains very high journalistic standards and, unlike a certain paper abbreviated NYT, is quite intent on and successful at separating its news from its editorials.

I'm pleased to report that my granddaughter, who is eleven, is fascinated by classical mythology. For Christmas (BRINGING US BACK ON TOPIC) I gave her the Folio edition of Robert Graves' The Siege and Fall of Troy. It took some work to find an AS NEW copy. It was worth it when I got a message of appreciation from her.

>42 laotzu225:

I'm not sure that Jeff Bezos would be against banning Parler's Greatest Hits.

>41 Crypto-Willobie:

Or indeed, if he, she, or they sang it rather than wrote it . . .

>43 laotzu225: Don't look now, but your bias is showing.

>47 Jason461: Are you serious? Rupert Murdoch is a very honest and philanthropic individual. All of News Corp's media outlets are non-biased and well researched. Every article isn't the typical opinionated piece which is so prevalent in news these days - it's just pure hard facts. Have you ever read the New York Post? It's a work of art.

I've been cancelled from this group, but I check in from time to time. To me, there's no debate here, I thought I'd post a report on this subject.

From the Daily Wire:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/disrupt-texts-aims-to-scrub-schools-of-violent-ha...

A group of teachers is working to “deny children access to literature,” according to The Wall Street Journal, under the guise of eliminating racism, sexism, and hate speech from K-12 curriculums — and the project is set on winning out some of history’s most influential texts.

The project, called “#DisruptTexts,” is largely the work of “Twitter agitators” and critical race theory specialists who have found a home in America’s public schools, the WSJ reports, but it has the support of individuals with access to influential publications like School Library Journal that have an impact on choices made in school districts across the country.

“Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those ‘in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,'” a “young adult novelist” involved in the project wrote in the magazine.

“No author is valuable enough to spare,” she continued, putting some of history’s greatest authors directly in the crosshairs. “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.”

“Outsiders got a glimpse of the intensity of the #DisruptTexts campaign recently when self-described ‘antiracist teacher’ Lorena Germán complained that many classics were written more than 70 years ago: ‘Think of US society before then & the values that shaped this nation afterwards. THAT is what is in those books,'” the WSJ reported over the weekend.

Homer’s Odyssey is on the target list, as is F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dr. Seuss. One teacher told the WSJ that he’d “rather die” than teach Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlett Letter” because he chose to be in the “fight against misogyny and slut-shaming.”

“The Scarlett Letter,” of course, addresses those themes directly, as one critic of “#DisruptTexts” pointed out.

“If you think Hawthorne was on the side of the judgmental Puritans…then you are an absolute idiot and should not have the title of educator in your Twitter bio,” another young adult author — this time an opponent of the movement — “shot back.”

The complaining author found herself “canceled” under a dogpile of “anti-racists.” She was eventually forced to apologize, and her agent was forced to dump her from her client list over her “racist and unacceptable” views — views that are borne out by a basic consult of Wikipedia.

Although book-banning among the censorious has been a regular practice for centuries, the WSJ notes that “#DisruptTexts” does appear to be “getting results.” Homer was banned in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and, Newsweek notes, the anti-racist classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird” found itself on the wrong side of censors this year, as did another young adult book that deals with racism, Mildred Taylor’s “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

The problem with “To Kill a Mockingbird,” school administrators said, was that it depicted a “white savior” in the form of lawyer Atticus Finch.

---- My opinion:

I'm not really sure that inclusiveness is what you think it is. I've also heard many similar groups preach inclusiveness with a reality based in something else. I won't debate this, as I'm posting the article above that is just reporting on the subject. The fact is, we need to STOP making everything about self and understand other cultures and people. That creates divisiveness and completely misguided lies on both sides, i.e. the far right extreme (QANON followers) and far left extreme (CNN/MSNBC Viewers).

We do not need to have the kids project themselves into something and make everything about self. We need more than ever to learn about others. Disrupt Texts is based on a failed ideology. There is no debate to be had.

>49 Cubby.R.S.:

'The fact is, we need to STOP making everything about self and understand other cultures and people.'

Exactly.

Rather than a secondhand interpretation by The Daily Wire and the WSJ (Thanks to this thread I now know about the WSJ, which I had always assumed was merely a US equivalent of The Financial Times, but apparently not; The Daily Wire I have no idea about ), instead of selective second-hand quoting, isn't it a better idea to check original sources and investigate the well-designed disprupt texts website, which a couple of clicks just found for me : https://disrupttexts.org/ ?

Their mission statement seems entirely reasonable:

'#Disrupt Texts is a crowdsourced, grass roots effort by teachers for teachers to challenge the traditional canon in order to create a more inclusive, representative, and equitable language arts curriculum that our students deserve. It is part of our mission to aid and develop teachers committed to anti-racist/anti-bias teaching pedagogy and practices.

We believe that literacy is liberation. By developing students’ literacy skills, we support their ability to critically read and navigate a democratic society. To be literate in today’s world, students must develop empathy and an understanding of a diversity of experiences.
We do not believe in censorship and have never supported banning books. This claim is outright false. It is a mischaracterization of our work made to more easily attack us, serve an agenda, and discredit the need for antiracist education. Teachers and schools determine curriculum for any number of reasons, and in fact, we know that censorship and banning efforts disproportionately hurts LGBTQIA+ authors and BIPoC authors are already underrepresented in the publishing industry.
We believe that literature provides access to a diversity of experiences by providing “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” (Bishop, 1990) to develop empathy and understanding. A curriculum that does not reflect the diversity of human experience does a disservice to all students.
We believe that no curricular or instructional decision is a neutral one. For too long, the traditional “canon” — at all grade levels — has excluded the voices and rich literary legacies of communities of color. This exclusion hurts all students, and especially students of color.
We believe that critical analysis of all texts helps students become stronger thinkers. Each of us has studied, taught, and continue to teach from canonical texts, just as we also make intentional choices about teaching, pairing, and centering BIPOC voices.
Thus, #DisruptTexts advocates for curriculum and instructional practices that are culturally responsive and antiracist.'

Could anyone really disagree with the above? It is pretty much what government funded initiatives in the UK have been doing to a greater or lesser degree at least since 1975, when I started teaching, and even after fifty years of course it is a task that has no end. Society is continually changing, and education must always reflect and challenge.

In any case, fascinating as this all is, as I said upthread I have my doubts if this is really within the scope of Folio Society devotees, and I can't help but feel that the OT prefix to any thread is usually a bad idea. We are a diverse gang of many nationalities, backgrounds, races, genders and levels of education, and I would think the chances of ongoing general civility are increased if we stick to our common interest - paying exorbitant amounts for books that look pretty when lined up.

(Not that I am averse to a dingdong about the abundance of bunnies, Charles Eade's cross stitch commandments or Folio publishing books which people will actually read at any time)

>48 Joshbooks1:

You're taking the piss, right?

>52 Crypto-Willobie: That I am! Although, as a Bostonian there is nothing sweeter than reading the Post's sport section and drinking the tears of all the unhappy Yankee, Jets and Giants fans.

>51 red_guy: it’s a little self righteous in tone, wouldn’t you say? And it all has a whiff of retribution against western culture under the surface.

I’m never opposed to more books being read. There’s no downside to it. But there is a reason certain books have been read for generations. They have survived because they resonate through the decades and centuries.

Does it occur to this organisation that 99% of western literature has already been purged from the curriculum naturally, because it wasn’t very good? The less than 1% that is considered cannon is therefore probably worthwhile.

Also there’s a thrill when reading Homer that you are reading something which was also read by myriad of cultures throughout history.

There are books written in the modern era which may well still be read in centuries time. It will not be us who decide which ones.

>47 Jason461: I think it was YOUR bias showing.

>54 Uppernorwood: They have survived because they resonate through the decades and centuries.

Really? Because neither Iliad nor Odyssey resonated with me when I read them.

>54 Uppernorwood: Also there’s a thrill when reading Homer that you are reading something which was also read by myriad of cultures throughout history.

Never felt that thrill reading Homer...

>54 Uppernorwood: It will not be us who decide which ones.

Yet when there are those who try to change what is read *now* they get attacked. How dare they try and update a curriculum to expose kids to more diverse and more relatable literature? Clearly a three thousand year old Greek epic poem written in dactylic hexameter is the best way to reach these kids.

Reading through this thread, the referenced articles, and even the disrupt texts website, I am not finding what they’re replacing Homer with. While I’m all for adding a diversity of books that reflect the fullness of the human experience, I’m not sure replacing The Great Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye with Juliet Takes a Breath, a recommendation made the Disrupt Texts guide, is an equal replacement. In general, I agree with >54 Uppernorwood: that canonical books are there because they’ve survived decades, if not centuries, of natural filtering. That said, I get that there are only so many hours in a teaching day and that maybe the struggles of a “self-proclaimed closeted Puerto Rican baby dyke” are more real-to-life for students than what happened between Gatsby and Daisy. Do we spend more time on a single book, exploring all its themes and structure, or plow through multiple books? Do we read Gatsby in depth, Juliet Takes a Breath in depth, or both? In the end, I hope that the teacher is sensitive to the needs, interests, and abilities of the class in front of him/her, and has the ability and authority to choose the best texts for a particular set of students.

In my own 80s and 90s education, I feel that there was a diversity of books, from Fangles’ Homer, Shakespeare, and Conrad to Chinua Achebe, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison. Certainly the presence of more diverse titles probably meant the exclusion of others, but most of the ones that made the list were worthy of being there. I could see Ocean Vuong as a modern, diverse voice that still has literary weight.

In the end, I think we need a balance—canonical (if you will), high-power, literature from a wide range of voices and cultures, works that serve as a kind of bridge across regions and time (and also unfortunately form the backbone of standardized tests) and newer, untested works that might speak to students more and might encourage habits of lifelong reading.

>57 mnmcdwl: Yes, that's a good point about the silence regarding the proposed Homer-replacement.

I can imagine Homer might not suit every 14-year old student, and changing a curriculum is not censorship. In terms of the quality of education though, whoever Homer is replaced with needs to be...well, as brilliant and timeless as Homer. Maybe someone like Milton? It's not easy.

When we got a pet dog my daughter named him Homer. I thought how wonderful that my 12 year old daughter knew about the epic ancient Greek poet and his rich contribution to civilization and culture. When I told her this she went "Huh?. He's named after Homer Simpson". Then when she named the next dog Nelson, I knew it wasn't after the Admiral!

Very good points raised by many people. I remember when in 9th grade I took a course in the "Epic Tradition" we read a great deal from different sources. We never read the original Homer (way beyond us at that point) and instead read a lot of Edith Hamilton with some other sources mixed in. It was a class that absolutely resonated with me to this day. It was tough, and honestly there were parts which I thought were terrible - for instance I thought that Ovid was so amazingly boring... which of course I completely disagree with today :)
So, I would say education is not about appeasing the students. It's about opening minds and being challenged. One of my colleagues who teaches English read through this whole hullabaloo and noted that ultimately he thought it was being blown out of proportion, but also that if an English teacher is so against teaching Homer, etc. they should simply be teaching a different class and that there is room (and need) for both Homer as well as other authors with unique viewpoints and perspectives.

To make a point about the "surviving the ages" thing. This argument isn't without validity. However, it's worth noting that until very, very recently the people making these decisions were all white men of the the (generally) upper/privileged classes. That matters a lot. We can't pretend that the process of filtering was entirely without bias.

Also, I haven't read all the books being suggested for substitutes, but unless you have, it seems hard to suggest that they aren't good substitutions for the ones being replaced.

Put another way: In Shakespeare's day, there maybe a million people who were literate in English where literate = can write their name. Today, there are hundreds of millions of us. There is A LOT of great literary art out there and more appears all the time.

Two brief points:

1. One approach that I rarely see suggested by reformers is to engage with works from the canons of other cultures, rather than recent works by subaltern authors. To make it relevant to this conversation, reading Three Kingdoms rather than works by Homer would be a substitution that makes sense in some ways. (I’d prefer reading both, but I also recognize time is a scarce resource, not to mention adolescent attention spans.)

2. Whether or not Homer is “good” is a bit beside the point, as one cannot understand other literature, including by authors with marginalized identities, without command of influential works, which include Homer. I challenge anyone to appreciate Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon without some knowledge of the Bible. Or The Odyssey, as a minute with Google Scholar reveals:

Fletcher, J. (2006). Signifying Circe in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. The Classical World, 99(4), 405-418.

Aesthetic splendor is a fine reason to read a work (one of my favorite reasons), as is direct representation of alternative perspectives, but these are hardly the only reasons, especially when considering education.

>62 abysswalker:

If a work cannot be enjoyed or understood without a vast amount of background knowledge, then I would argue that it is either 1. Not very good or 2. Has intentionally set a small audience for itself.

Of course books like Song of Solomon can be appreciated without deep background knowledge. If we have that knowledge, it may deepen our appreciation.

Have I read/studied everything Eliot references in The Wasteland? No. Do I still enjoy The Wasteland and think I have a good understanding of it? Absolutely.

>63 Jason461: it seems to me that giving students the knowledge and tools to deepen such appreciation is a worthy goal of education. And see point 2 again: sometimes “not very good” (whatever that means) works are influential, and understanding the world and the past demands engaging with them. Quality of literature and fairness of representation are not the only attributes to optimize, though I do think they are valuable as well. (Perhaps this is a legitimate difference in values.)

>39 Jayked:

Did he nod?

(An old law tutor of mine claimed so. I was never quite sure what he actually meant.)

>66 Cat_of_Ulthar:
https://www.wordsense.eu/Homer_nods/
Have to confess I nodded off now and then reading him.

>65 abysswalker:

How much stuff do you think we have time to cover? In an ordinary-level class in a non-pandemic year, I can get 4 books in. 6 in an advanced class. You gotta make choices.

The Odyssey is important. Am I ever gonna teach more than excerpts? Absolutely not. The kids don't like it enough and, frankly, important though it is, there isn't an enormous amount in the Odyssey to analyze. So I make other choices. Because my choices are limited. When I have Freshman (we teach it in the 9th grade in the US, typically), we hit on it for a week or two so they get the background and then we move on. Other fish to fry and all that.

Fascinating thread, albeit rehashing earlier discussions.
When I think about my 1970’s British education, 7th grade texts were aimed at making me a reader: John Christopher’s Tripod trilogy, T H White’s The Master, as well as LoTR (read by our teacher on Wednesday afternoons.
At O level (11th grade) set texts were Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), so making us scourers of footnotes and no longer engaged readers (although I will always be grateful for studying these texts, I suspect that would not have been the consensus).
In between was Lord of the Flies, which felt grimly realistic at a boarding school!

>67 Jayked: thanks for this.

>56 filox:
Really? Because neither Iliad nor Odyssey resonated with me when I read them.

Maybe not, but generally they do, otherwise they wouldn't still be published and republished. I can think of plenty of classics which don't resonate for me, but I can appreciate why they would for others. Not many, if any, when I sit back and ask what on earth somebody might see in it.

>63 Jason461:
If a work cannot be enjoyed or understood without a vast amount of background knowledge, then I would argue that it is either 1. Not very good or 2. Has intentionally set a small audience for itself.

Or it was written at a time when the knowledge required was widespread, but which we may well have lost sight of since. Equally, a great work need not be easily accessible, but might well require some work from the reader. Not necessarily so, but that doesn't exclude it from greatness. And anyway, what is background knowledge? A book steeped in one culture might well require somebody from another culture to do a certain (great?) amount of work to understand it properly.

I do think that we have a habit in schools of introducing texts too early. For example, Shakespeare wasn't written for 10 year olds, yet I was expected to teach Shakespeare to that age group. Why? There's plenty of time later on, once the foundations have been properly laid. There are several books I learned to hate because I came to them too early. Equally, there are many books I love because I came to them at just the right time. I didn't read Homer until after I left school.

>70 Willoyd: "There are several books I learned to hate because I came to them too early."

I agree. In my case, the American transcendentalists and Faulkner, both of which I found boring when I read them as a junior in high school. I now greatly enjoy some of the transcendentalists (especially Emerson) and while I may never quite see eye to eye with Faulkner, his influence fingerprints are all over a lot of works by others I like, so I suspect I would have felt differently had I encountered his work in a different context or maybe 10 years later.

>68 Jason461: to close the loop on this, I agree we're always going to have to leave out some important works just due to the vast quantity of knowledge.