Florida Schools Pull Shakespeare's Works For Fear Of Being Prosecuted By DeSantis

Schools around the state of Florida opened their doors for students this week, but there will be a noticeable difference in many high school classrooms: Shakespeare is gone. As fears mount of prosecutions under the backwards laws in Florida, schools are pulling the works of William Shakespeare because some of the passages deal with sex, and that's no longer a thing that teenagers are allowed to know happens. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's going on in the backwards state of Florida.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Many public schools across the state of Florida are actually going back to school today. Start of the new school year. Some started earlier this week. The rest of them pretty much start next week. Teachers are apprehensive. Students are a little apprehensive, and administrators are terrified of the new school year. And the reason for that, of course, is the fact that they're worried they're going to be prosecuted under Ron DeSantis legislation that prohibits any kind of talk about, you know, critical race theory or, or gender or anything that could be considered sexually explicit or anything gay or anything like that at all. Teachers, school districts are once again pulling more books from the classrooms. And according to a new report from the Tampa Bay Times, one of the most recent victims of this book, banning is none other than the bar himself. William Shakespeare, several school districts in the state of Florida, most recently Hillsborough County, have now pulled Shakespeare from their curriculum because there's some passages that talk about sex.

Oh my God, this, Hey, by the way, I'm not talking about Shakespeare for kindergartners. I am talking about high schoolers. Okay? Suddenly high schoolers can't know that sex is a thing. Trust me, if you're a high schooler and you don't know that sex is a thing, then you've got bigger problems to worry about than your next test on William Shakespeare. By the way, uh, here's the thing. They're allowing some Shakespeare texts to remain, including Romeo and Juliet, that does, you know, mention sex, but they have to take out those parts so they're not letting all of Shakespeare stay just, just a little bit, you know, a little bit here and there. You, you can talk about these passages. You can't talk about these. Why? Because the administration, the librarians, the teachers, everybody is terrified. They're gonna be prosecuted. They're gonna lose their teaching license, and they could be thrown in jail or find tens of thousands of dollars under this oppressive and regressive legislation that is now law here in the state of Florida. We're robbing our children of their very right to even have a proper education in our public schools because we want to be what, more puritanical than people were 500 years ago, because that's where we're at. I mean, the puritans of the early days of America have got nothing on what conservatives of today are trying to ban. This is utter insanity. This is profane to me. Not to mention the fact that, oh, we're taking out Shakespeare. Kids aren't paying attention anyway. You idiots. I mean, let's be real.

Do you think it's worse for them to read, you know, flowery language describing intercourse, which again, like, he's not even being like explicit with it. It's all metaphors and imagery and stuff like that and Shakespeare. Um, but then they can go home and they turn on their tv or they pop in a video game where they listen to a podcast, listen to any popular music today, and they can hear it. They can see it, they can read it, they can do all of it there. So what exactly are you trying to do? You can't regulate these people's entire lives.