Murdered Rapper's 'Puerile Scribblings' on Summertime Reading List
by Jim Brown
May 19, 2004
(AgapePress) - When some public school kids in Massachusetts return to school in the fall and are asked what they did this summer, the answer may be: "I read a book by Tupac Shakur."The Worcester school system is putting the murdered rap star's book of poetry The Rose That Grew from Concrete on its list of books to be read this summer. Shakur -- who in his music glorified such things as misogyny, violence, crimes, and drug use -- was shot to death eight years ago in Las Vegas. Other books on the list include works by John Steinbeck and Charles Dickens. In the meantime, school committee members have asked administrators to check out Shakur's poetry to make sure there is nothing objectionable in it.
Conservative author and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin calls the school district's decision "ridiculous" and "a sign of the times."
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Columnist Michelle Malkin |
"What you have in many public schools across the country is capitulation to the excesses of multi-culturalism and political correctness," Malkin says. "You've got teachers who are too lazy to teach [and] too lazy to do what used the traditional role of the teacher, which is to impart knowledge."The columnist says instead of imparting knowledge, "many so-called educators would rather feed the cult of self-esteem" and allow children to indulge in materials that simply reinforce their narrow worldview.
Malkin says it is "depressing" to see the traditional Western literary canon go down the drain. Shakur's poetry, she says, was written when he was a teenager and is "a joke for anyone who's actually seen the collection of poems" -- adding that, in many cases, "the things that pass for poems are simply his puerile scribblings."
Recently in Palm Beach County, Florida, a school board member also selected Shakur's book of poems and embraced it as a way to get students interested in reading.
