Forget about Precious Knowledge. The newly released documentary Outlawing Shakespeare: The Battle for the Tucson Mind is controversy-free and gets to where the other documentary left off — from how the Tucson Unified School District’s governing board failed to fight for the program and protect its students to why we’re in this mess to begin with lovely interviews and quotes from Tom “Carmen Chenal” Horne.

So reschedule that documentary screening — with Outlawing Shakespeare.

This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2012.

9 replies on “Outlawing Shakespeare: ‘We Were the Ones Who Needed Protection From the Board’”

  1. The film includes interviews with almost 20 opponents of the Board’s action but only three persons from the “other side,” and those three are all from state government. TUSD’s viewpoint is completely omitted. The narrator claims that the film makers spent nine months trying to meet with me and shows video of them visiting my workplace (I was never aware of this), but a simpler strategy would have been to write and request an appointment. I have given countless interviews on this subject and would have been glad to set that up.

    Finally: teachers in TUSD are free to use “The Tempest” and always have been.

  2. Once again there is a huge communications problem at TUSD regarding the truth..

    Just as Pedicone played dumb regarding any book ban, Stegeman conveniently ignores the fact, which was captured in an audio recording even, that asst. superintendent Dr. Morado forbade Curtis Acosta from using The Tempest since it deals with issues of “race, class, and oppression.”

  3. Mr. Stegeman; you clearly have a severe case of Romnesia. That makes perfect sense as the two of you are cut from the same cloth. It is shameful how many democrats have defended, let alone tolerated, your consistent racist acts. You may win a second term on the TUSD Governing Board but it will not be with the support of the Latino community. While I am sure you suffer from the delusion that you are serving some greater good, in the end, when all the dust has settled, you will be judged no different than the generations of folk who just knew what was best for the Mexicans. Richard M. Martinez

  7. Mark Stegeman’s comments above should really trouble everyone with children in TUSD and everyone concerned about his role as a representative of the TUSD school board. I’m not sure if Mark Stegeman is dishonest or disingenuous or what, but I find it very troubling that the TUSD school board member is only NOW requesting the audio recording to the locally and nationally reported story over the Shakespeare/MAS debacle at Tucson High School, after he has spent months denying it. The audio recording was posted and reported in local and national media venues nearly nine months ago. As someone who infamously trolls around websites and Facebook discussions with endless commentary, Stegeman’s apparent lack of awareness is difficult to believe–especially since the audio recording came from the same teacher that Stegeman accused of teaching “cult-like” behavior, which not only embarrassed our city and educators with Stegeman’s profound misunderstanding of Arizona history and basic pedagogy, but provided the state officials with the very evidence used against TUSD. I thought retired educator David Safier’s observations of Stegeman’s embarrassing behavior were spot on: http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2011/08/stegeman-embarrassed-himself-by-straying-from-his-areas-of-expertise.html

  8. I was not previously aware that there was an audio recording. In any case, the recording supports staff’s account of its instructions to the teachers. In those instructions, the issue was not the text itself but the curriculum in which it was embedded:

    Morado: “I don’t know that you have to eliminate ‘The Tempest.’ I think that once…”
    Acosta: “I do if it’s the only way I know how to teach it.”
    Morado: “In which case, then I think you throw it out.”

  9. Mark Stegeman, how do you teach the “The Tempest” without mentioning issues of “race, class or oppression”?

    And more to the point, why is TUSD, where you are in charge, outlawing any discussion of “race, class or oppression.”???

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