No, Shakespeare isn’t being ‘canceled,’ says this teacher accused of doing it

But let’s stop worshiping the Bard and read him with a critical lens, she says

Every few years or so it seems we are treated to yet another heated debate about William Shakespeare and the place his works deserve in English classes today.

Someone will publicly express the idea that Shakespeare isn’t the be-all and end-all of literature and worshiping him isn’t necessary — and shouts will follow that the Bard is being canceled. We’ve heard it before — and now we are hearing it again.

Sarah Mulhern Gross, a National Board-certified English teacher at High Technology High School in Lincroft, N.J., writes in this piece about how she wound up as a character in the latest to-teach-Shakespeare or not-to-teach-Shakespeare drama.

She talks about some of his plays in ways that you may not have heard in your English classes — “Romeo and Juliet” was anything but a love story, for example — and questions whether young people really need to read a Shakespeare play (and sometimes the same one) every school year. And she explains why she does expose her students to Shakespeare’s writings — but one day, she might not.

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