We went from Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost to something that sounds like lyrics from a '90s grunge band. I don't quite think OP's criticism is unwarranted.
If a lot of the people who criticize using old dead white people as literary texts - which, having worked in Education I know is a "hegemony" hot-button issue - it's not like other brilliant works translated (or not) could be used. Neruda, Marquez...they're completely deserving classics and, I guess the real problem here, just as hard to study and work through as any of the other traditional texts. Kids don't like hard, never have, but that's the essence of education and brain growth - challenges.
So let's go straight into calculus because kids should be exposed to the good stuff, and skip going through the developmentally appropriate material that prepares for understanding and absorbing the advanced material.
I'd like to see some scientific studies that prove that teaching the classics, and skipping the "terrible" stuff, is a useful way to teach literary skills, as opposed to pushing a class (snobbery) agenda.
Why are those classics developmentally inappropriate? When I was a kid growing up, we read Pushkin - undeniably one of the greats, but very accessible.
Without further debating the merits of the verses in question (I thought it was self-evident)... I think it would be an accurate characterization that the author of this editorial will not be read or remembered half-a-century from now. Therefore if the purpose of education is to provide something of enduring value, I do not think it strange, or snobbish as you put it, that we should prefer to have Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Langston Hughes in our public schools.
You might find that you personally dislike them but than that too has helped shape your esthetic views, education should indeed bring you to encounter significant milestones of cultural and literary heritage; at the very least to give a student some understanding of the landscape.
>I do not think it strange, or snobbish as you put it, that we should prefer to have Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Langston Hughes in our public schools.
Yet you provide no argument supporting these choices. The only reason Shakespeare endures as well as it does is due to the dose administered to children in the school system.
Why does the history of a culture or a nation endure? Why do children know about the civil war or slavery in the south? Why not the list of American Idol winners?
I don't think your response is merely incredible, it's actually a malicious and toxic kind of sophistry.
Likewise you haven't provided any motivation as to why the Civil War should be taught in history class instead of last year's American Idol winners (If you tell me prominence in popular or cultural memory, than indeed Shakespeare occupies the same place).
Shakespeare endures well because he endured for the readers, theater goers, actors, authors, poets, artists, film-makers and academics after him. Of course you could say that they are all also brainwashed by schooling and wouldn't have cared about Shakespeare (this doesn't pass the litmus test though, author's that were popular solely based on being forced in schools haven't endured c.f. Chinese or Soviet education with ideologically shaped curriculums).
No, I'm not trolling. I'm pointing out that there seems to be very little objective criteria for choosing what poetry to consume. So far it seems your argument is that it's taught because "that's the way it has been done".
The civil war is taught in the US because it had a huge impact on the development of the country. The tensions in the south today relate directly to it (confederate flags still fly today). American Idol winners are irrelevant in the context of history so equating them is silly.
Did Shakespeare's work result in the overthrowing of a government or something on that scale I'm not aware of?
Shakespeare's work has had a broad and enormous impact on art and culture through out the centuries (English and Foreign) - that you are aware of the impact of the civil war (you were taught) but not the former (Wikipedia is a reasonable starting point), is a gap in culture and education but the point stands analogously.
Snobbish much?