Ditching Shakespeare: why?
 

Since when did getting an education have to be "easy?"

An article from the Seattle Times today (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...glists26n.html, quoted below) discusses how many high school students simply can't "get" the classics anymore... they prefer to read contemporary novels that are easier to digest and relate to, that aren't written by long-dead white males whom they have no "connection to."

The argument seems to be against requiring students to read something that is unpleasant or unfamiliar to them, or is hard to understand because of its old-fashioned writing style and hard vocabulary. Some argue that it's actually oppressive to teach the classics, since they are in fact written by mostly white males.

Now, I don't think that reading Shakespeare is necessary for "realizing yourself" or becoming a responsible citizen, as they quote later in the article. People don't always *need* to read certain books in order to become a responsible person. And anthropologically, it's inane to expect something like Hamlet to appeal to or be understood universally. Additionally, I do think that there *is* too much dead white male literature out there, but that the alternatives are sometimes "too easy" to read. (Jon Krakauer? Come on, good for summer reading but not for teaching critical skills. Toni Morrison? Kick-ass, she takes a lot of work to read.)

Apart from the politics, though, what about the sheer power of reading challenging literature that is abstract and hard to relate to? As a former English teacher who fell in love with literature in the 11th grade while reading The Great Gatsby, I am puzzled about why kids have so little willingness to dig into these books and give them a try. Is it because of the instant information on the internet? The fascination with visual images rather than the written word? Do parents not read to their children anymore? What's behind this??

Yes, Grapes of Wrath is HARD. But it's worth the effort of reading it. It's not easy reading, it may not always be politically correct... but it takes work, and yeah, it does suck sometimes. But learning to read and think critically, to be able to express oneself clearly and effectively, to not have everything spoon-fed to you in one-bite chunks that go down easily... that's an education. I teach college students as well, and their critical reading and writing skills are reprehensible (often at or below high-school standards, certainly not college level)... I credit that to the dumbing-down at the high school level.

But maybe I'm just a bitter old fogey. :rolleyes: Thoughts?

I hated Shakespeare with a passion because I couldn't understand a damn thing I read, and would often have to reread a sentence 5 or 6 times to get the meaning, and I was in honors and college level English in high school. Having to have the teacher dissect every sentence sucked...there were students who understood it better than I did, but I know there were plenty who didn't. However, I liked the actual stories once I understood them. As far as other "dead white guy classics", I read plenty I loved and plenty I didn't. English in school isn't about reading what is popular...reading classics provide valuable insights about things that one might not think of otherwise. Personally, I think it celebrates the growth of humanity as well...reading great works as far back as Beowulf, and not forgetting our past as humans...regardless of who wrote them, While women (and especially minorities) aren't represented as well as white men, I read books by women as well...some that I loved, and some that I didn't. More than once I remember finishing a book in school and thinking...wow. That book was awesome, and it changed my way of thinking in some way. I never read The Grapes of Wrath, but I adored Of Mice and Men. It's pretty sad to know that a lot of today's students may never read books I dearly loved, but were difficult to read...Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights. I guess I kind of feel the same as you, abaya.

OK - I am an old fogey - I could just imagine what my high school would have done if I mouthed off like that... Let alone what my parents would have done to me...

I really gotta wonder how these people will be in the real world, when their boss gives them a project - will they turn it down saying it's too hard?

It's a book, it has a set number of pages, you read it-- what's the problem...

There are some "classics" that I wanted to poke my eyes out they were so dull, and to this day, I still don't quite understand symbolism, but I don't regret reading any of those books... am I a better person because I read them? no... but reading them gives a sense of accomplishment...

Like Medusa, I too hated Shakespeare. I have only read two of the books, Romeo and Juliet in High School, and Merchant of Venice in College. I think the sappy love story doomed me in high school. That is not real appealing to high school boys, and yes I hated the style that it was written in to. In high school though I had to read Color Purple, and that is not a easy thing to read, a lot of the story is written in “black folk” language. I enjoyed reading that so I don’t think the “not challenging enough” wasn’t the problem.

I know a lot of kids hate reading, it sucks that they have to shy away from the classics. Getting the students to read period and opening up their eyes I think is more important. My daughter likes to read the Harry Potter books. I’m not going to take that away from her and give her some book that she thinks is boring, cause it will do nothing more than collect dust.

It's a shame. And almost insulting. It's like saying, "you minorities are too dumb to understand Shakespeare so we're ditching it."

I suppose this could be one more example of the ongoing "wussification of America". What's wrong with hard? What's wrong with challenges? The basketball net is too high, should they lower it cause it's too hard? There's too many note in classical music, does that mean we should stop exposing our kids to it?

One of my favorite books is "Diary of Anne Frank". I'm not a pubescent Jewish girl but I could still appreciate it. Do I have to be black to appreciate "Root"? I'm not an Asian woman either but they made us read that in high school. Ok, no problem, I can dig it.

It just gets harder and harder to be a teacher.... I feel luck that I don't have to be in K-12 now. SOunds like a nightmare.

I didn't have a big college edumacation, but I've been able to slog my way through some of the classics on my on.
(Most recently Mark Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court')
I had a very good librarian in elementary school that inspired in me a love of books.

Some people just don't like reading, though. :(

If it takes more contemporary literature to get youngsters reading, more power to the schools.

Just hope it's not at the expense of the good stuff.

(I hope this is ok to put here.)
I read online from these sites as much as I can,
http://www.bibliomania.com/0/-/frameset.html (a lot of classics here)
http://pd.sparknotes.com/ (also has full eBooks)
and http://www.gutenberg.org/ (Project Gutenberg)

Oh man, I loved Shakespeare. I get where they say that the classics aren't always relevant, but you know, gotta know your roots. Dickens, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, etc. Some of it can be hard reading and a litte frustrating, but it's important for several reasons. Build your vocabularly, understanding the progression of the English language throughout the years, and sometimes it's a great way to give you an understanding of what was going on in that time period (i.e. Dickens or Shakespeare (sorta) )

It gives me joy to know that I am not the only "bitter old fogey" around here... :D thanks guys, you give me hope. Let me clarify that yes, Harry Potter and other contemporary literature gets kids reading (hell, *I* love the whole series, in my 20s!), and yes, it's important to find some literature that is relevant to kids' lives. But one cannot learn to think on Harry Potter alone. That would be like eating dessert for every meal and expecting it to be enough for your body.

I guess I am troubled that more and more people (especially adolescents) seem to grow away from an appreciation of reading. I feel sad that we have to applaud high schools for doing whatever they can to get kids to read... noble as it sounds, often it means dumbing down books to a reading level far below their grade. Really, by that age, most kids are capable of reading so much more difficult material, but fewer teachers and parents feel like forcing them to read it these days. But what can one do?

I know I felt like I was hitting a brick wall when I taught English... nothing stuck unless I used brightly flashing lights and did a song and dance/multimedia to persuade them. I hated stooping to those levels... I felt I was demeaning them, and yet that's what they are used to now.

Every high school I know of is still teaching Shakespeare.

Two years ago I had the opportunity to assist one of the teachers at my dad's high school in teaching her unit on Romeo and Juliet. For most of these kids, this was their first exposure to Shakespeare, and they were EXCITED. It was contagious. I think, especially in the case of Shakespeare, it's all in how you present it to kids. In this particular case, it meant more interactive work, showing the video after they watched it (so they could check their comprehension), and lots of discussion.

Despite the "dumbing-down" of American society, there are a LOT of cultural references to Shakespeare. If kids don't get a handle on the classics, they'll miss a lot in current culture--even popular culture. From Homer to Dickens, they're all favorites of mine, and they're all worth learning about. I think all these kids need is a teacher who is excited about the book they're teaching.

Oh, and Grapes of Wrath is one of the worst novels by Steinbeck, in my opinion. Poorly written, lacks focus, etc--especially in comparison to Of Mice and Men, which is clearly focused and tightly written.

Man I love of Mice and Men. I just laaaugh and laaaugh and laaaugh when I finish it.

/Saying that to people is so offensive. Especially if some one asks you if you've seen a movie like Schindler's List.

But really, OM&M was a pretty good novel. I thought it was a pretty interesting social criticism.

If we're gonna talk novels in the last 100-150 years, though, The Great Gatsby wins all in those classic novels.

Owl, you're probably right... I guess my point is that in mostly urban schools (Seattle Public, for example), there seems to be a growing shift away from a classics-heavy focus to contemporary novels that are "cool" to read. I always thought Shakespeare was cool, myself, but so many struggle with the language and stop right there.

What kind of school were you teaching in? I do think urban/suburban/rural kids have different reactions (because of both too little and too much comfort at home) to this kind of stuff... but maybe I am wrong?

I have to side that I absolutely hated Shakespear for half of High School. However during my Junior year everything just started to click and it made much more sense... I cant explain it to others.

That being said, it's not his message that is difficult (Much Ado About Nothing is nothing more than a funny soap opera), but it is the language.

Say what you want about the stupid young kids, but we speak a completely different language than Shakespear did. There are MANY genious authors out there who write about things relevent to today which we could easily switch to. Just make them with complex and thoughtful stories, To Kill a Mokingbird for example. It takes an intelligent being to get the deeper meaning of stories. The important part of high school is teaching people how to think and analize.

If I were a teacher I'd just say "ok" and tell them to leave. Then smile when they return later asking for help.

I understand Shakespeare, I liked some of his work, but I still haven't gotten a response to my question of what makes it relevant in modern education other than "It's a classic, duh." I'd really like to hear someone give me a concrete reason, because the fact that something is a classic, even if it's enjoyable to work with, does not mean it's necessary for a complete education.

Because, to this day, our culture is full of references to Shakespeare (take 10 Things I Hate About You for an example) and other classics. The Simpsons regularly makes references to great works of literature. Reading Shakespeare and other classics (Homer's Odyssey, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, etc) teaches kids where "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" comes from, and gives them a greater understanding of who we are, where we come from, and why certain things today are still said and still pop up in our cultural framework.

Of course most literature is by dead whites. The male factor is a more complex entirely. But on the first points.

a) we only live a short while, ideas last longer - so of course you have to read
stuff by those who have died

b) The language English came from England. For **** suke - what colour would
you expect these people to be

On the latter point.. there's a lot of stuff written by non-whites (and "less whites). Sure it's in Sanskrit, classical Chinese, classical Greek. If a student is willing to learn these languages to read a respected text, that would be ok with me.

In fact - the school system should probably include some translations anyway from these sources. Plus some works by women.

(But you can't study the structure of a text properly - unless you know that language)

While I figure it's an acceptable loss, as it is by no means critical, it is an unfortunate sign of the times. It's yet another dropped notch, the degeneration that comes from these 'lowest common denominator' shenanigans which plague the media. I see this less as a way of improving education and more as a counter-productive concession to the growing inadequacies of the youth.

Shakespeare was assigned reading when I was in HS. But the thing that I really enjoyed about it was that my teacher, Ms. Zimmerman didn't just expect us to read it, she read much of it to us in class. She taught us what Shakespeare was trying to relate, she challenged us to explore Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet on our own. Additionally she exposed us to Dickens' Great Expectations and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mokingbird. And trust me, as a freshman in highschool, it took someone who could teach to make me pick up any of those books. And I have copies of all those books on my bookshelf now.

But I have no problem if schools these days want to teach more contemporary works. I only hope that the teachers will want to teach something from it other than a few new vocabulary words.

I can only speak for myself, but the writings of Shakespeare (written for the "masses") speaks to our inability to communicate in the "King's English." Teens mock their reading lists, particularly Shakespeare, because they are stubborn about stepping into a language that requires a great deal of attention.

I would suggest the writings of our founding fathers if they wish something a bit more current. Heh, escaping entertainment for deep philosophical issues. Serves 'em right. :)

Not just a teacher, but an inspired individual. How fortunate you were. :)

It's not a language that requires a great deal of attention, it's a language that takes a great deal of attention to us. Shakespear wrote his plays for the uneducated and illiterate masses, to claim students dont understand him because they are stupid does not hold up. It's a different language than what we speak today, that's it.

I am far too biased in my opinion in that I prefer the Classics to modern literature. Those are the ones I first read, by choice. Yes, I did have excellent teachers that opened up the language to me and explore the vastness that is literature pre-1900. I was fortunate, and I do believe this is as important as a good teacher, to have excellent and accessible translations. The stories are not that difficult to understand and, in some cases, still can be related to on a human level of struggle against the times.
The Greek plays are still powerful, Chaucer is still as bawdy and Shakespeare's phrasings continue to captivate me 25 years later.

The English language has a progression that I believe is important to impart to students. Also, I was taught a heavy portion of History to help further explain the hows and whys of the literature.

If taught well, any subject can give a child a spark. I pray for more inspired and dedicated individuals to communicate a love of reading and what came before as it can only serve them to make them better people.

Kids need to be slapped around and told to learn something for once. Learning new things is all about having to retool your thought processes to accomodate a new style of learning and a new set of data you're not used to having to deal with. Yeah, lots of stuff is hard to learn. Deal with it, and TRY to learn, or go ahead and be a janitor for the rest of your life. I enjoy a litter-free floor as much as the next person.

Also, re: white male authors of the past...

It's history. We can't change that all the old literature is written by white males. It's still historical, it's still perfectly valid, and it's nonsense to suggest that it's somehow oppressive to people of this day. Also keep in mind that most writers, historically speaking, lived a very meager existence- many of the most famous of which dying penniless, despite their genius... so we're not talking about some rich, white, slave-owning bastard male... more often than not, they were people who simply had a flair for writing and got very little compensation for their gift.

Shakespeare teaches what's fundamental and universal about humanity.

Think about it: there's almost no English-based text that's less immediately comprehensible (okay, Chaucer might be worse, but that's almost not English anymore, as we think of it). The language is difficult in both its verbal and figurative qualities. But the emotions and experiences it expresses are still totally relevant to us (including to young people) today. Why do you think Romeo and Juliet gets such wide reading in High Schools? Because love-tormented teenagers have been the same since the dawn of time!

Reading Shakespeare grounds you in what's fundamental about humanity. You see that you're not alone, or even particularly unique. It's a deeply resonant and reassuring experience.

The key to understanding the classics, especially the idiosyncratic language of Shakespeare, is having a good teacher.

I've had teachers that couldn't teach their way out of a wet paper bag. They made novel studies dry and boring (how does one make Aurthur Miller's The Crucible, boring?).

Reading Shakespeare, Austin, Dickens, etc. can be a very interesting (if not exciting) exploration of language, history, story-telling, etc. It is all in how it is presented.

Regardless, it does take work on the student's part. In some cases, a lot of work. But isn't that the whole point of school? To do some work. School like life should not be easy. It should challenge.

One phrase was going through my head as I read through this thread: permanent underclass.

The fact is that good quality high schools, even public ones, are still teaching the proper literary classics. Many others, including those with high minority enrollment, are receiving a substandard English education. Can you imagine denying minority high school students the opportunity to read great literature because it was all written by white people? Bitter irony there.

When I was in high school, the process of countering for white-male-ness had already begun. In the same class I read "Pride and Prejudice" and "Hamlet", I was also forced to suffer through "Things Fall Apart", a vastly inferior novel. Facts are facts: the greatest authors of all time (at the very least until 50 years ago) were all white men. Teachers can feel free to deny this obvious point, but the consequence is that the quality of literature in schools gets worse and worse.

And as I said before, this is precisely the sort of trend that leads to increased class stratification. People who cannot read complex texts do not become lawyers or professors or historians or...

I do think that this is the crux of the matter. You really can't shove a 300-yr-old or even a 50-yr-old text at a teen and say "Read that. It's good for you."

With a good teacher though, all things are possible. They have to help the student understand, interpret, and evaluate the context. That's when the light switch is flipped on.

You're comparing apples and oranges. Chinua Achebe's novel, "Things Fall Apart" is brilliant for what it is. Attempting to compare it to "Pride and Prejudice" and "Hamlet" is doing "Things Fall Apart" a great disservice, as all of those works are the product of their time and place. "Things Fall Apart" is a good commentary on the consequences of colonialism. Consider that it was published in 1958. As a student and teacher of English, I would never attempt to compare those three works of literature--I would not compare "Pride and Prejuice" and "Hamlet" to each other either.

The fact is, there have been some positive changes in the canon recently, but we can't expect to revise the canon overnight and not have some problems. We're still discovering works that are worthwhile by women and people of color. While some of them aren't brilliant works of literature ala Shakespeare, something like Mary Rowlandson gives us a further understanding of what it was like to be there then, and to be a woman in the time she lived. The same applies to works by people of color: reading Frederick Douglass' biography lets us see the world from his eyes. To me, that's what I love about literature: the ability to step into someone else's shoes. And I like to step into shoes that don't always belong to white males.

That is precisely the sort of relativism I am rejecting. There are no novels that are immune to (or simply should not undergo) comparisons to the classics. It is, of course, obvious that the circumstances surrounding "Things Fall Apart" are different than those of Shakespeare, eg. But that consideration is not relevant to determining its value as literature. While it is admittedly difficult to state precisely what makes for a great novel, the circumstances surrounding the writing and publication of a particular book are not relevent considerations: African literature should not be accepted into the canon through what essentially amounts of affirmative action - books and books and some are better than others.

One component of literature is the opportunity to step into someone else's shoes. However, this characteristic alone does not a great novel make.

I agree, Owl. I personally loved Things Fall Apart, and I took an entire African Literature course, after my BA, because I wanted to study more literature from that continent. I am not one to balk at reading international literature; I'm an anthropologist, after all! I think it's crucial for every person to be exposed to a wide array of good literature from all backgrounds.

However, my point is not to debate the politics of teaching otherwise marginalized literature. It's that kids want to read easy literature, and they bitch and moan about it when it's not spoon-fed to them... and many teachers and school districts cave in to some extent, so "at least the kids are reading" (even if the material is far below their cognitive ability). In that sense, the canon alone is not just changing, it's the *attitude* towards the classics... in a classroom, if kids get one or two easy, contemporary novels to read, and then you introduce a classic to them, they whine and cry that they aren't smart enough, they don't get it, someone needs to help them (or they just give up and fail). Most of them end up skimming anyway, writing the papers the night before, and not really engaging deeply in the material. I see this time and time again at both the HS and college level. People want education to be easy, period. I don't like that.

I must admit that we read some books in school that just seemed totally pointless. But then, my English score was lousy.

One thing that threw me for a loop was that a large part of the assessment (here) was based on us constructing arguments and essays based on cases from novels.

I can barely hold that concept in my mind long enough to write anything.

I had to memorize that in high school english for a test. At that time, Rush had already sung a similar line in Limelight, AA Big Book personal stories, I see it referenced in movies, books, speeches, I've even seen it quoted as part of the NYC Subway poetry.

I don't think Shakespeare has much to say about human experience, at least he's not the best or most interesting playwright in that field. *coughIbsencough* But he is by far the most quoted, paraphrased and generally played with, so Shakespeare (and the Bible, and Homer, Virgil, Cervantes etc) is like a basic body of knowledge required to understand and interpret more modern literature and other forms of art.
Also, being able to deciper a text that isn't plain and straight-forward is a VERY valuable skill in every path of life. But reading Shakespeare requires a lot of initial guidance, not only because the language is old-fashioned, but because reading a play is way different from reading a novel. Me, I'm so used to it that I have no trouble at all, but I've recently had to guide some first-timers through the joys of only dialogue and stage directions and it was an enlightening experience.

My high school English teachers didn't teach Shakespeare beyond Romeo and Juliet. However, we did have to learn Chaucer. I would have preferred Shakespeare, which I elected to take in college as an ENGL major.

I think either Chaucer or Shakespeare should be introduced in high school for a couple of reasons. It gives some history of the English language, and as far as being relevant...

Crazy rulers? Gang fights? Teen sex? Teen suicide? Witches?

Okay, maybe witches aren't relevant.

SImply put, the best, if not only, way to grow is to get outside your comfort zone and do something that you haven't done everyday of your life. Does Shakespeare teach univeral truths or only "white" truths? I don't think it matters at all. Let the acedemics argue that. What reading Shakespeare does is make you get outside your everyday vernacular, it makes you think and shows you that Hollywood really isn't very creative.

I think all people should read something a little outside their daily experience on a regular basis, if for no other reason than to understand that segment of society or history.

Dude, I am catching what you are pitching.

In order to communicate with people, to have your ideas presented clearly to others requires a certain command of the language. How are you supposed to vent without Shakespeare?

Hey, it's like listening to the Beatles, Presley and Led Zeppelin. How can you appreciate contemporary music today without knowing where music came from?

Folks, what scares me is that you are relying on a guy in a room making 26 grand a year to tell your kids what to read.

Do you think these fucking teachers have read Shakespeare? Chaucer? I bet not. They got a couple of classes in English Lit under their belt, and they plagarized the fucking essays in the first place. The Lesson Plan spoon-feeds the shit they are supposed to discuss. They don't care about Shakespeare any more than your kids do.

But Charlatan said it, and I agree: Once in a very long time, you get a teacher who is passionate about literature, and they enstill that passion into those around them.

You don't like stuff pulled off of the curriculum in schools? I find it funny and ironic.

Buy your kids the classics, and show them how important they are.

I haven't read EVERYTHING Shakespeare wrote, but I have read enough to enjoy his work (and get the jokes when people make fun of him).

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're launching a huge insult at the majority of teachers. Most teachers in the United States start out at 28k a year. Secondly, most states require a Master's degree or completion of teacher training beyond the baccalaureate level. Furthermore, most states also require that teachers pass a general education assessment test, such as the CBEST (California and Oregon's exam) or the WEST-B (Washington State's exam). Then they must usually display knowledge of the subject through another assessment exam.

For teaching in secondary school in Oregon, the requirements state I must have an undergraduate degree in my subject area. That means a degree in English. And guess what my specialty is? You got it--Shakespeare. I'm not alone, either. And I'm pretty sure very few of my classmates plagiarized their papers--I know I sure didn't. As for being spoon-fed a lesson plan...sure, more and more teachers are having to teach to the test, but that's not their fault. We can blame No Child Left Behind for that one.

No one with only six credits of English lit would ever get hired to teach secondary English, and you usually need more than that to teach in elementary school too. So let's not pick on the teachers, eh?

They're doing the best they can given the pretty awful situation in American education at present. They're sorely underpaid and overworked. If anything, they deserve our pity, not our scorn. Our educators are being asked to step up to the plate more and more in ways that parents should be, and that's what makes education difficult in modern times. Most teachers I know show up every day with a passion for the work they do. Some don't, however, and I think that has more to do with the bureaucracy, the bullshit, the paperwork, and the stuff OUTSIDE of the classroom than it does with the subject matter or even the kids.

But please, let's not lump the good educators--and there are many--in with the few bad apples.

I read Shakespeare for book reports in Elementary school. I didn't get the nuances or some of the symbolism but I understood the general storyline. Then I went to do a bookreport on it. The teacher called in my parents for a parent-teacher conference because she believed that my parents had helped or completely written my bookreport for me. Then my Mom insisted that ask me questions about the book. They couldn't think of any right away without skimming through the book themselves. I do believe that they didn't know what was in the book. I answered the questions completely and showed comprehension. If my Mom hadn't made them ask me questions they would not have given me credit for the books. That's what they had intended to do.

I think children are let off the hook too much today. It's not about becoming a "human". It's about developing character, hard work, learning how to read between the lines, recognize detail, and understand symbolism. It's about learning how to function at a higher intellectual level than just your own needs. Not to mention that if you read any intelligent news or even newspaper comics there are occasionally references to the classics which you will not understand if you do not read them.

Yeah, same at my school system in the backwards, redneck south. If you wanted to teach English, you had to major in English... AND education. It wasn't a course load for the faint of heart. And then you had to pass the NTE general and English.

My English degree required Chaucer or Shakespeare, American Lit, British Lit, Contemporary Lit, Greek and Norse Mythology, Business Writing, Rhetoric of writing, a few creative writing classes, Pop Culture, two semesters of a foreign language, linguistics, journalism classes, and marketing. Additionally, for some reason the head of the department came up with a plan for ENGL majors to write a thesis for a B.A. instead of taking the exit exam. The exit exam was akin to the SAT - a couple hours, get above STUPID and you get your diploma. For my thesis, I wrote a comparison of Blake and Wordsworth.


Thesis - 20 pages, without source notes.

Thank God I didn't have to read Silas Marner. I hate that book.

Yep--thanks for representin' Owl. :) Personally, my teacher certification program required 60 quarter credits in Secondary Education methods and theory, and none of those went to my major, which was English (also required about 60 quarter credits--including a required seminar entirely on Shakespeare). Additionally, we had to get another endorsement, so I minored in History and took enough extra courses to be able to teach that as well.

So I'm not sure where this idea of someone who doesn't know what they're doing is a valid one--nor is it fair to say that because teachers get paid so low (for their level of education) that it somehow reduces their quality. In fact, I think that *because* they teach for so little, they should earn more of our respect. It's sad that teachers don't get paid as much as, say, engineers... I think teachers' jobs are just as important, if not more so, and they sure as hell work the same long hours (I was around 50-60 hours a week when I was teaching). It always puzzles me, why teachers' salaries are so low... it shows you the priorities of our society, in many ways.

There are a number of teachers here in NYC public schools that became teachers during the teacher shortage in the 90s. They didn't have to have any certifications at all. When they had less students and too many teachers they did some sorting out and most of these people lost their jobs.

Most of them had no background in teaching, education, or anything for that matter. They needed bodies to watch children.

Just to throw out my opinion really quick... there is nothing about Shakespeare that must be taught. There aren't any lessons of life exclusive to Shakespeare, as many in this thread have pointed out, you can learn Shakespeare's themes by watching many current Hollywood films. There's nothing necessary about Shakespeare in any way, shape, or form... he's practically completely irrelevant, due to the fact that he has been copied so many time into more current, comprehensible forms.

The only reason Shakespeare sticks around is because it's been accepted as a valid form of scholarship and high art... so people who are obsessed with media, like myself, master Shakespeare and then make a living off of comparing media with Shakespeare. The ability for people with these jobs to continue doing these jobs requires that Shakespeare be continually presented as essential to any education, otherwise they would be out of work and replaced with more contemporary media scholars/teachers. If I was teaching high school English, and I had my way, I'd replace Shakespeare with Quentin Tarantino and teach kids to think critically with something they're familiar with and something they already think is cool.

An interesting viewpoint, computer science people learn basic languages like BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, PASCAL. Sure you could jump ahead to more of the newer languages like PHP, Java, C#, C++ but there is something about knowing the beginning, the origin.

Baz Luhrmann's rendition of Romeo and Juliet shows that the dialogue can still be the same even though the rest of the trappings updated and still work well. I did happen to see it in a $3 theater with a bunch of ghetto kids having a hard time following the story but in the end did understand it.

Conversely he shows in Moulin Rouge that musicals can be of the same using contemporary music to fill in classic love story tragedy. His first work with La Boheme also shows the timelessness of it all.

i think folk should read shakespeare.
if possible, they should see productions.
so what if they have to expend some effort.
not everything worth doing is easy.

i agree with many of the arguments above as to why: in some of shakespere, you encounter ways of thinking about representation that have interesting and maybe even important philosophical and political consequences.
the density of references in others works, in other media, to questions of representation posed via shakespeare is a second reason why it is important to read his work.
more generally, "the canon" is nothing more than a network of referencepoints. it is as is is because folk use these referencepoints to do other things in the present. what is happening in the present is a continualy refiguring of the "canon"--it is not a thing, it is not stable--if the "canon" is anything beyond a network fo referencepoints, then it is the result modes of cultural production that are only really comprehensable sociologically--demonstrations of cultural power. a canon is a list. if you have cultural power, you get to impose your list over those of others. it is not a natural formation. this is a short version of why i think politicophile's post above about protecting the canon from african literature to be--well----idiotic.

what i would add to the arguments above for teaching shakespeare in high school....i run into a problem with university students--which i assume is imprinted along the way through high school--with reading works that they know they will probably have to read again and again, at different points in their lives because they will see different aspects in different ways as they themselves change. they resist being confronted with materal that is not easily mastered. they do not find it adequately flattering to think that they only get partial access--and even more that there may not be full access, only different readings.
instead students seem to want tidy little packages of self-contained information. they prefer complex works reduced to objects for instant consumption.
they want a simple little world full of simple little objects that they can pretend to have mastered without having to put in too much effort.
they like cliff notes.
easy peasy.

in addition to acclimating to a 16th century mode of writing, concpetually many of shakespeare's plays are not so simple---so they do not fit into this notion of a tidy little world populated with instantly digestable objects that function to reassure the consumer--not a student, a consumer--of the legitimacy of a reduction of the world a realm of consumer goods. i see in this not only an encouraging of intellecutal laziness, whch issues into stagnation--it is also an aspect of a politics that would reduce the horizons of kids to the narrow purview of what exists.

reading complex texts is not an act of reverence toward the past--it is a way of opening up possibilities for both producing and interpreting complex works in the present---it is about pushing students into the circles of interpretation. the argument from eliot's "tradition and the individual talent" that i like runs in this direction: tradition is important in that knowing it enables folk get get the jokes or moves that contemporary artists reappropriate and/or recycle. and these jokes/moves redefine the tradition itself.

art is not entertainment--to my mind art is confrontation--it is about discomfort, it is about trying to force an audience to think, not only about the event or text in itself, but via the event or text about how the world around them is, how it operates---it is about dislocation, which functions to pose questions about what folk who choose to live in a one-dimensional world give up to do that and about a political/cultural order that encourages a one-dimensional world.
for me, art--like philosophy, like history, like thinking in general--- is about corroding a sense of certainty, pushing you into interpretation and functioning to provide tools for carrying out interpretations. and these are about being able to imagine the world otherwise. this is what complex works give you--the shape/refine/reiforce/extend your ability to imagine the world otherwise.
art is about pleasure as well----but unthinking pleasure seems to me not to be pleasure at all. (but that last bit is just me, i suspect)

to my mind, teaching is about finding ways that enable students to enter into the play within these texts, to open them onto the philosophical or political frames that are both within the text and that operate in the present to shape readings. this is tough enough to pull off in university--i have nothing but respect for folk who teach at the high school level who maintain someting like this idea of what they are doing.

teaching high school is a tough gig.

I have no idea what these kid's problem is. I seem to handle reading these things just fine. Heck, I'd rather read the Shakespearean stuff that the tripe current authors toss out.

See what I did there? I used words to provoke an emotional response in the reader.

I know that teachers do a great job. I know that they are the most underpaid profession in society. I know they have passion. I respect every person that goes into the classroom and helps a kid like I was start to use their talents.

My point was (and still is) that parents are getting off the hook here. What other great pieces of literature are the students missing? Why aren't the parents giving their child a better understanding of history, classics and the world around them by getting their kid away from the television and into the library?

If the United States (and other countries, but let's stay on topic here) is wondering why other nation's children do better academically, can they not look at the home, instead of the school?

There is simply no excuse for a child to miss the classics.
And teaching Tarantino instead of Shakespeare is a pretty bad idea.

I will not sit idly by and let a teacher (or school board, or principal, or coach) define my child's education. I will also teach. I will live my life to provide a good example.

edit: And I have seen some pretty brain-dead people walk through the College of Education. That is from personal experience. I will not make a blanket judgement of all teachers. Please do the same.

I would have to disagree with this. While I read Shakespeare in high school (and a good lot of it), it was dispersed between the grades, and within more contemporary readings. The bulk of great reading I did was in my final two years, while in the international baccalaureate program. Authors like Isabel Allende and Arundhati Roy transformed the ordinary curriculum into something that did inspire, challenge, and motivate students with complicated, and sometimes controversial, material. Even books like Their Eyes Were Watching God and Things Fall Apart seem to have integrated into the collective "to read as a high school student" list, and I read them outside of the IB program. I think that there should be certain requirements, such a number of "classic" texts (Greek playwrights, Chaucer (in modern English, but with an introduction to middle English), Shakespeare, maybe even Donne or Pope), along with the established curriculum of literary history (Puritans, Transcendentalists, Romantics, Realists, et al.), but also a required number of "contemporary" texts, anything from Walter Mosley to José Saramago (though his narrative style would probably be too challenging/a deterrent to read; but the theme here is international author) to Maxine Hong Kingston to Stuart Dybek. The classics are great, but so are many contemporary authors. It isn't the books that make the critical reading skills, it's the teaching of the books. If students are more willing to work with Of Mice and Men than The Grapes of Wrath, let the students work with the former, so long as they do so while preparing for assignments like The Grapes of Wrath in the future. By that I mean, shorter, or more contemporary texts that still teach critical thinking and reading skills are just as effective, if not more because they engross students further than the significance of 1-dimensional love in Much Ado About Nothing.

I think the problem is that the reading materials provided in high school don't work as well as resources with which high school students care to build their critical reading and analysis skills. Because that's why students read the materials: to learn the methods necessary to read, analyze and process the literary elements in the texts. I am a bit cynical about pop culture: television, obsession with fashion, trends, Hollywood, et cetera, and would pessimistically blame things like the OC or MTV as deterrents from critical thinking. I know my English teacher for the last two years of high school also taught standard English classes, which had The Lion King on their curriculum. They had to watch it, and write a paper concerning the symbolism in the movie. See, that to me is copping out, but at least the students were learning how to construct decent papers. But reading Toni Morrison? I don't see the problem there. Skipping over some Shakespeare for more contemporary books that still challenge students to learn the skills for which they are in high school doesn't seem a problem to me, so long as the curriculum still pushes students toward critical thinking.

I don't think the problem is the challenge. It's not the height of the basketball net, it's that the classic basketball court is in an amphitheater across the Atlantic, and the ball's a little deflated. Fresher material isn't any less of a challenge, so long as it still contains the necessary elements to learn.

I am not really sure if we disagree... in the sentences of mine that you quoted, I said that Toni Morrison was "kick-ass" and that she takes a lot of work to read (compared to Jon Krakauer, which is more of a free-time read than something academic). Perhaps you misunderstood me.

The more contemporary, *well-written and challenging* books are excellent for students to read, mixed in with what has been traditionally taught. But I dislike the attitude that students have towards "hard" literature, where they whine and cry about not knowing what the big words mean, etc. to the point where a teacher starts teaching The Lion King (to use your example).

If the novel is a brain-crusher and it really teaches the student how to think, read, and write at a higher level... then I don't care when it was written, or by whom... as long as the student gets due exposure to the canon, too. But my experience has been that many modern novels are just too soft for the classroom (the kind that come a dime a dozen, especially the ones students want to read for their "independent reading" work).

I'm arguing that there is a vast number of contemporary works that would be appropriate in high school, and that I have experienced first hand. I also think that the students aren't being lazy in their whines; they're expressing, however ineloquently, the distance from which they are from classic texts. That distance creates new challenges that aren't necessarily appropriate given what the students ought to be learning. That isn't to say that Shakespeare should be cut out completely, but that traditional curriculums ought to evolve along with the students (and by evolve, I don't mean backwards).

You'll note that the line you quoted is from a different paragraph than the one in which I respond to you saying that I disagree. ;)

But I do think that we have very similar opinions in this.