I ran into a former English teacher of mine one day; she was running a used bookstore and proceeding happily in life. In fact, many people who once stood in front of a classroom where I sat have gone on to lead happy lives, once they got over the memories.
She told me that she quit teaching in 1973. One day she told a class that they would be reading and discussing "Hamlet," and the more outspoken among them told her that they did not wish to read Shakespeare and wanted to read something "relevant" such as Richard Brautigan.
At first she thought they were kidding, in the time-honored tradition of high school kids, and she went on with her introductory lesson about the story of the fresh prince of Denmark. Later that day, the head of the English department stopped by her classroom to tell her that a delegation of students had thronged the principal's office to register their displeasure, and the word came down: Goodbye to the Bard, Hello Brautigan.
And goodbye to a fine teacher. She quit, rather than not teach "Hamlet."
As the years have gone by, I've realized that people who were 17 in 1973 are now 65, busily getting their Medicare cards laminated, but in their 20s, 30s and 40s they raised children, and many of those children were raised to think they needed only to kick up a fuss and their world would change at once to fit their needs.
Now we find ourselves in a world where everyone knows every dang thing.
Homeschooling is a wonderful idea if the people doing the teaching in the kitchen know what they're talking about. I know a lot of moms and dads who are very well qualified to teach their children at home. But the woman who told me that "We don't need none of them teachers with their fancy educatin' teachin' our kids nothin'" was not on that list.
When the pandemic broke out, did we turn to the word of trusted doctors and scientists who had studied such diseases for decades?
We did not. We took counsel from politicians who flaunted their lack of expertise in the matter, bolstered by sycophant lunatics who nodded like bobbleheads when asked if drinking bleach and shoving ultraviolet lights up our apertures were good ideas.
And when Clorox turned out not to be the answer, someone said, "Let's try sheep-and-horse de-worming medicine" and people broke their necks to get to the farm supply store.
And when vaccines came along, people who were given a plethora of vaccinations before entering school (here's the list for Maryland residents), people willing to eat, drink, smoke and otherwise partake in any number of substances regulated or otherwise slammed on the brakes and said, "I have to do my research before I will take a medicine for me and my family by people who have devoted their lives to public health!"
And now we come back to "Hamlet," because all across the nation, school board meetings have replaced Roller Derby for violence threatened and real, as people who don't know Dred Scott from Judge Dredd pack the rooms to demand the removal of something called "Critical Race Theory" from the curriculum. That was an easy request to honor; CRT is only taught in graduate-level courses.
It's an easy vote-getter for a politician to stand before a crowd and crow that "We need parents to control what the schools teach." If that's how you want it, go ahead. But be sure to allow people in the service department at your car dealership so they can tell the technicians how to gap their spark plugs. Let them go back in the kitchen at the restaurant to add their expertise to the making of a souffle. And by all means, let them stand next to the surgeon during a nephrectomy and weigh in with their opinions.
I mean, what would Hamlet say?
