robbdn

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.

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Cynthetiq

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.

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roachboy

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.

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Kalnaur

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.

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BigBen

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.

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Tuft

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.

abaya

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).

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Tuft

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.