"To Be or Not To Oh SNAP!"

6/14/06



How dumb and attention-deficient are kids in merry old England? Coordination Group Publications, a major publisher of educational material, seems to believe this generation's intelligence ranks somewhere between "sea sponge" and "Jerry Falwell." (Which is a pretty narrow gap) CGP has caught a great deal of flack recently because of new dumbed-down versions of Shakespeare plays they've churned out. They're translated from Shakespearean English into something you might expect to come out of the drunken maw of Andy Capp. Apparently todays kids are incapable of digesting anything that was written prior to invention of the phrase "Wuddup, bi-atch?!" Without any further ado, would you care for a solid raping of a few famous scenes from Romeo and Juliet?


Act Two, Scene Two - balcony scene

Shakespeare:

Romeo: But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? Is it the
east and Juliet is the sun! (...)

Juliet: O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art though Romeo? Deny thy father and
refuse thy name.

CGP:

Romeo: What's on your mind?

Juliet: Oh, just moons and spoons in June.

Romeo: Cool - let's get hitched then.

Act Three, Scene Five bedroom

Shakespeare:

Juliet: Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear. Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

CGP:

Juliet: Well that was nice. You'd best be off now.

Sickening, yes? Here we see the joy of poetic language reduced to the phrasing of a mildly retarded scullery maid. Just reading this is something like the oral equivalent of a molten lava enima. And am I insane or did the translation completely change the point of her speech? In Shakespeare's version, Juliet is sort of tongue-in-cheek saying that the morning can't possibly be here yet; (it was the nightingale, not the lark) it's too soon, even though she knows full well that it's day. She is trying to convince him for just a little more time together. She seems to be saying just the opposite now.

Not enough for you? Perhaps Macbeth is more your fancy:

Act Two, Scene One - Macbeth sees a blood-covered dagger

Shakespeare:

Macbeth: Is this a dagger, which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: - I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.



CGP:

Macbeth: Oooh! Would you look at that.

More examples can be found here.

It's not as if this is aimed at elementary students, you understand; these books are geared toward 14-16 year olds preparing to take the GCSEs. (General Certificate of Secondary Education) CDP has sold over 126,000 of these lowest-common-denominator tragedies.

Simon Cook, a spokesman for this den of idiocy, claimed they were only trying to recapture the children's interest, and

"it's very important to make it accessible. We are stopping people being afraid of it."

Hey, fuck you, buddy. You get an "A" for effort but "F" for "fuckwit jerk-water encouraging kids to shortcut their way to knowledge." You know what? It's hard, yeah; it was written five hundred goddamn years ago, douche-bag! Some kids simply wont get it, okay? So what? Even the "developmentally challenged" can grasp the context and emotion of a play written in an obscure vernacular without having it scrawled out in some perverse cartoon which has as much to do with teaching Shakespeare as my masturbation has to do with raising children.

This stuff is just for lazy kids who don't want to put forth any effort and want all their learning handed to them already chewed. In short, large bags of lethargy with the attention spans of protoplasm and an academic aptitude which can only be measured in fractions. This sort of material encourages the attitude that everything should be easy and if something is difficult or can't be printed on a T-shirt, it isn't worth knowing. Unless, of course, the point is to raise a generation of kids who couldn't point out a noun in a lineup, much less compose a coherent letter or finish a sentence without taking a hatchet to the last remaining tatters of our bastardized language.

I thought America was the only country taking radically stupid and impotent steps to shore up our drain-circling education system. (No Child Left Behind my ass!) Egh, I need a drink....



Sources:

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The Daily Mail