As Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida state legislature continue to turn the state’s educational institutions into political battlegrounds, one unlikely historical figure has gotten caught in the crossfire.
Long considered valuable to the education of American students, large chunks of William Shakespeare’s classic works are getting pulled from Florida classrooms over concerns that they might run afoul of the new stringent guidelines imposed by lawmakers.
It was just three years ago, in 2020, that Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking listed Shakespeare’s plays as some of its “top of the line literary works.” Now teachers are lamenting that titles like Romeo and Juliet are having large portions excised from the approved curriculum.
“I think the rest of the nation — no, the world, is laughing us,” Gaither High teacher Joseph Cool told the Tampa Bay Times. “Taking Shakespeare in its entirety out because the relationship between Romeo and Juliet is somehow exploiting minors is just absurd.
The new laws have led to battles between competing parents’ groups fighting over whether to remove or keep available certain titles in school libraries and long lists of books now “under review” in school districts across the Sunshine State.
It’s costing taxpayers money, too. School districts are being forced to spend dollar amounts in the tens of thousands to review and catalogue books just to meet new state guidelines, according to a report in Politico Florida.
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