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Is Shakespeare Still Relevant?

April 17, 2015 by Room 213 Leave a Comment

Teaching Shakespeare

Ok, so the plays are over four hundred years old and the language is difficult.  Kids will let out an audible groan whenever the teacher announces that Shakespeare is next.  So why are his plays still on almost every high school English syllabus?

It’s a question that a colleague of mine asks on a regular basis.  He is a fabulous English teacher who loves to teach poetry. He is also our drama teacher. Not a likely candidate for someone who would like to remove Romeo & Juliet from his to-do list, eh?   His problem with the bard, and his omnipresence in our curriculum, is that there are so many good modern plays out there that are so much more accessible. The kids find Shakespeare difficult and inaccessible, so why not make a change?  I agree with him on most counts–there are other great plays out there. The kids do find it difficult.  But I still think we should teach it.


YES, SHAKESPEARE IS STILL VERY RELEVENT
The fact that the kids find it difficult is a non-starter for me.  We want to give them challenging work so they can reach beyond where they are; if we don’t, there is no growth.  We don’t keep lifting the same five pound weights at the gym if we want to get stronger, and we can’t expect our students to become better critical thinkers if we don’t add some mental weight to their tasks.
However, his point that students find Shakespeare inaccessible is the one I have the biggest problem with.  Every year when I start Macbeth,  I hear the groans.  But I don’t let them throw me off.  I ask my students to give me–and the play– a chance. I think one of the biggest problems with the study of Shakespeare is in the way it is delivered. Pages and pages of scene questions and quotation analysis are not going to do much to help students fall in love with Shakespeare.  Instead, we need to find ways to make the story relevant to their lives.  I mean, really, how many of us have struggled with temptation? How many of us have made a mistake that we regretted later?  And, how many of us have succumbed to outside pressures, doing something that we know we should not?  Poor old Macbeth is definitely someone a modern-day teenager can relate to!


When I teach Shakespeare, I use an inquiry approach, asking a question before we start, one that students will use for their investigation of the play. The question is this: What can we learn about human nature and how can we apply these lessons to our own lives?   We will still do some traditional activities, like looking at quotes, understanding character development, etc., but with everything, we will be looking through this lens: how can we learn from Macbeth?  Then, when we are finished, students will complete writing assignments and projects that illustrate their learning.  They will still read, write and present. They will still need to use quotations from the play.  But they will do so in a way that is much more relevant and interesting.

Now, I can’t say that I win them all over.  However, every semester I hear students tell me that they liked the play a lot more than they thought they would.  What more can a teacher ask for?
So what do you think?  Is Shakespeare still relevant?  If you think so, how do you hook your students?

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Comments

  1. Lauralee Moss says

    April 18, 2015 at 11:42 am

    I stand firmly on the teach Shakespeare side. 1. He is too important of a figure in literature for students not to have some experience reading him. His influence reaches authors that students will study. 2. He is still part of our culture today, often with verbal expressions. 3. It is good for students to read material they may not understand but are able to figure out. Shakespeare wrote in a language students may struggle to read, but when they overcome that hurdle, they will be better readers and be better at analyzing literature. I'd argue that the bible serves that purpose too and I find that students who can read the bible can understand Shakespeare better. I wonder if there is a component of confidence in that – that students know they will eventually understand the difficult readings and all their effort will be worth it.

    Reply
  2. Jackie Cutcliffe says

    April 18, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    Lauralee: exactly.

    Reply
  3. Ms. Fuller says

    April 18, 2015 at 12:42 pm

    Absolutely but perhaps we should be putting more effort into including contemporary drama As well. If I still taught lit I could see doing 2 plays and 2 novels with one classic and one contemporary of each.

    Reply
  4. Ms. Fuller says

    April 18, 2015 at 1:15 pm

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    Reply
  5. Jackie Cutcliffe says

    April 18, 2015 at 1:16 pm

    Sara, that's my colleague's point. He wants to do more. It's so hard though when we have limited time. Wouldn't be awesome if we could completely design our own courses?

    Reply
  6. Theresa says

    April 18, 2015 at 2:54 pm

    "It's all in the delivery". Isn't that WHY students love or hate ANYTHING we teach? My enthusiasm is infectious, but so is my disdain for a particular work (insert mythology here). Shakespeare and his works are too important to our entire English 'body of work' to overlook him.

    Reply
  7. Ashley Langford says

    April 18, 2015 at 4:48 pm

    I went to a high school and only learned about two of Shakespeare's plays and a few of his other works… I wish I had learned more. I feel inadequate because I wasn't immersed in more. I believe it should be taught- but here's my caveat- you don't have to teach the ENTIRE play to make it relevant and meaningful. Teach enough for students to dig deeper into it and the students who are interested will read more on their own.

    Reply
  8. PerfettoWritingRoom says

    April 19, 2015 at 3:28 pm

    I couldn't possibly imagine not teaching Shakespeare. If we didn't do things because it was difficult… we would never have gone to the moon.

    Reply
  9. The Daring English Teacher says

    April 19, 2015 at 8:10 pm

    I have to side with Shakespeare. Despite the difficult language and how old his plays are, the lessons and values we can learn from his plays are still relevant today. I love teaching Romeo and Juliet, and I get my students to love it too. They line up before class to sign up for in-class reading parts 🙂

    Reply
  10. PerfettoWritingRoom says

    May 11, 2015 at 12:18 pm

    In response to what Jackie said….we should be able to design our own courses. 🙂

    Reply
  11. Anonymous says

    November 20, 2015 at 12:02 am

    I think students should continue learning Shakespeare. There are many important lessons that they need to learn, and these classics will do a much better job than anything in present day can offer.

    Reply
  12. Anonymous says

    June 30, 2018 at 7:57 pm

    Shakespeare will always be relevant, it's not how old the plays are, it's what they're about. The morals, the story line. the dialogue.
    If your students are rolling their eyes when you bring up teaching them Shakespeare, as a teacher isn't it your job to teach the younger generation in a way that will interest them. not so they'll forget everything they learned by summer.
    As well as that. He IS history, IF we stop teaching parts of our history, but a part of it that isn't war and countries being over thrown. that's so important.
    Also respecting and appreciating our worlds history because it's a part of what brought us to the place we are today. THAT is something that people are loosing touch with. The importance of ALL of our history. Not just the parts they want to focus on.
    Shakespeare shows that there is more to any story then just one side, then what one person thinks. Take Romeo and Juliet for example. She took the poison to appear dead, her side. Everyone thought she was dead, each reacted differently, They each had a side. Romeo killed himself. a dramatic reaction to a situation. Irreversible. Juliet came "back to life". Had he known that he would have never done what he did. Cause and effect. to every action there is a reaction. Shakespeare taught that better then anyone now a days could even hope to. Such important lessons throughout his writing. Maybe kids issues isn't learning Shakespeare. It's HOW they learn Shakespeare. I'm pushing this because when I was taught it was a lot of "I'm going to read this random part from this random play, now write about what you think it means.
    Improve the method, improve the lesson.

    Reply
  13. Room 213 says

    July 1, 2018 at 6:38 pm

    Well said!

    Reply
  14. Unknown says

    February 5, 2019 at 10:14 pm

    If you believe Shakespeare is irrelevant, you haven't asked my students. I teach in a high-needs inner city Title One school. My students are among the most reluctant I've encountered – most of them don't want to read anything but text messages. "Othello" is rocking their world. The suspense, Iago's machinations, the intrigue, the foreshadowing, Othello's noble and trusting nature… it's all VERY relatable for these students. I am NOT using the "NoFear Shakespeare" text – they're getting pure old-school Shakespeak, First Folio style. They're reading it aloud, taking it apart and they RECOGNIZE these characters. The discussions about jealousy, suspicion, manipulation, trust, relationships, unmanageable anger – "relevant" hardly does it justice. Don't toss out the Bard with the bathwater. If it's irrelevant, you're not doing it right.

    Reply
  15. Room 213 says

    February 6, 2019 at 7:45 pm

    I totally agree!

    Reply

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