Purging The Classics

 “Be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash), Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!” Says Heather Levine, a ninth-grade English teacher at Lawrence High School in Massachusetts who is just one of many “wokeists” who have successfully campaigned in getting Homer removed from the school curriculum in Massachusetts and expecting other American states to follow by example (which many it not all surely will) 

Although I live in Scotland, within the U.K. I do follow with interest the happening in the USA as fads which start across there soon ripple across the Atlantic onto our shores, take BLM protests of last year as an example .... they rippled right across the altantic, took the train up from the ports into George Square in Glasgow and then took a knee in solidarity to the killing of George Floyd ...and vandalised some statues in the process.

There is a sustained effort across in our old American colonies to deny children access to classic literature which certain people believe is not suitable to be read in today’s society.

Is such censorship being done on our behalf as there is a concern that someone may commit acts of terrorism using plots from classic literature is this new woke “utopia” we are apparently evolving into, I can see the headlines now clashing against our screens displaying the breaking news of a Trojan horse getting pulled along Princess Street as the public flee for their safety  

Or perhaps it contains hate speeches focused on minorities, I must dust off my copy of The Odyssey to search from the paragraphs possibly such as when Achilles asks Ajax why do the Thracians make up only 10% of their wee camp and yet 50% of the horse stealing is done by them. 

We seem to be gradually developing a ethos which dictates that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present day dialect and moral standards especially classics those in which racism, sexism and other forms of hate are the norm, how dare Willie Shakespeare not have woman present on the battlefield during his Henry V  Agincourt Speech, a 1415 English army without “Trans-archers” within its ranks sets a bad example to readers in the 21 century. 

The Woke brigade certainly enjoy designing a reading list for their ideal moral future-world stance yet their thoughts on Muhammad the prophets behaviour in the Quran appears escape criticism.... I wonder why? Perhaps a case of low hanging fruits getting harvested rather that real issues such as books that (certain interpretations of which) have encouraged jihads for centuries, instead the keepers of our morality in the past would prefer to target the likes of Salman Rushdie whose Satantic Verses got himself added to a rather long hit list (hit as in to kill not best seller) from an Iranian Atatollah.