William Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is many things: ruthless, ambitious, manipulative, flawed. But there’s one thing she isn’t: a man. Or so I thought. For almost a decade, I have been working as a private tutor helping students studying English and history. I love my job: there’s few things better in life than reading great literature and discussing it with keen youngsters. Often, tutoring is about filling in gaps in their knowledge; sometimes it’s about correcting misinterpretations. Most recently this meant I had to unpick the suggestion that Lady Macbeth was, in fact, a bloke.
The problem appears to have come from the line in Macbeth: ‘Unsex me here’
Predictably, the problem appears to have come from the famous line in Macbeth: ‘Unsex me here’. Much quoted by GCSE students, the line expresses Lady Macbeth’s wish to rid herself of feminine weakness so that she can help Macbeth carry out regicide. The whole soliloquy is often used by teachers and exam boards to analyse ideas about the stereotypes applied to men and women in Shakespeare’s time. Ruthless, bloody aggression was for men; nurturing gentleness for women. Lady Macbeth’s attempt to embrace more masculine qualities ultimately destroys her as she is overwhelmed with guilt at all the bloodshed she and her husband unleash.
Perhaps my student’s confusion stemmed from inattention or misinterpretation, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard something along these lines: Lady Macbeth’s behaviour does not conform to contemporary gender roles which means she must be trans. Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird is a little girl who likes climbing trees and is therefore non-binary. These depressingly reductive ideas suggest a learning environment steeped in modern concerns about identity rather than a commitment to thoughtful, rigorous analysis of ideas.
But the modern disdain for clear language in education is not only present in English lessons. My son’s PSRE (personal, social and religious education) book came home with a double-sided sheet, one side had an outline of a human body headed ‘body with a penis’, the other side was identical but headed ‘body with a vagina’.
Is this yet more evidence that our students are at the mercy of a madly evangelical sect of teachers who are determined to indoctrinate the next generation with gender lunacy? While I don’t deny that such teachers do exist (pronoun signs on the classroom door are generally a good indicator), for the most part they are as much victims as our students. Parental and students’ complaints are easy to make and as a result increasingly common. Teachers have to tiptoe carefully around discussions that consider controversial topics if they don’t want to find themselves disciplined. As a result, topics that should be straightforward (Lady Macbeth is a woman, she finds that frustrating) are expressed with the cautious, euphemistic and ultimately obscurist language of identity.
Although the gender madness has (thankfully) subsided, the culture is still deeply embedded in the practice of many schools. Look at their policies and mottos and you will see a steadfast determination to promote ‘kindness’ above all other virtues. In practice what this means is ‘watch your mouth’, and teachers are now well trained in the careful use of language which can not possibly cause offense to anyone. While this is all generally well-meaning, the result is that precision, accuracy and facts – all things that one would rather hope a school would champion – have taken a backseat. Virtually all of my students (and, infuriatingly, my own son) have a habit of referring to known individuals as ‘they’ rather than the singular – and sex specific – ‘he’ or ‘she’. Individuals are no longer ‘men’ and ‘women’ but merely identify as such (or neither!). This shift in language use may be merely annoyingly self-indulgent in adults but, when it moves into education, it makes it nearly impossible for students to unpick the facts from the euphemisms. Applying this to literature means that metaphor is no longer recognised as a means of creative illustration but is instead taken literally: suddenly Queen Elizabeth’s Tilbury speech in which she declares she has the ‘heart and stomach of a King’ sounds faintly disturbing rather than rousing.
Young teachers fresh from university and excited at the opportunity to pass on their own knowledge, have often spent much of their degree steeped in the language of postmodernism. Terms like ‘patriarchy’, ‘homo-eroticism’ and ‘Freudian’ litter the essays of my GCSE students. Their understanding of these concepts is ropey at best, but they are convinced that obscure, academic terminology is more useful than precise and accurate language, because that is what is being modelled. We are moulding a generation who are more concerned about how their words sound than what they mean.
After a dozen years in teaching, I gave up and moved onto the far less stressful option of tutoring. I applaud anyone who sticks it out in the classroom. But I beg of you all to remember: we are there to teach what is true, not what is kind.
