[spellbanisher]

The bigger issue surrounding whether we should teach Shakespeare or not is the question of what values and traits we want to develop in students. There is too much emphasis on self-esteem instead of pride. What does it say about our students that they quail and shrink from anything that seems challenging or foreign? Where is the curiosity? Where is the courage? To quote Breakfast at Tiffanys (the movie), “You know what your problem is, little miss whoever you are. Your chicken, you've got no guts...” Our students are becoming intellectual chickens. Where's the pride? Where's the attitude that you can climb any mountain, traverse any body of water, vanquish any foe, conquer any fear? How can they stand to fail where so many others have succeeded? How can anyone live with repeated failure and hiding? Why don't our students have the confidence to meet any challenge? Where's the resourcefulness and industrious required to overcome obstacles?

Students grow up learning that the ultimate form of living is consumption. They can consume, but they cannot appreciate. I call it the Burger King philosophy: “Have it your way.” Are the only worthwhile endeavors those that bring immediate satisfaction? To quote Thomas Paine, “What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value.” The belief that what is best is what is easy is a narrow and mediocre existence, an existence that is narrow-minded, hedonistic, incurious and therefore ignorant. This is not to say that someone who wants it the easy way lacks any curiosity; it is to say that he is curious only about the things that brings him pleasure, which is an infinitesimally small strip of existence. This person is not only incurious about the world outside his immediate interests; he is also incurious about aspects of himself that he may find unsavory or discomfiting. Thus, an incurious person cannot even know himself. That is a sad sad existence indeed.

At best, someone with this mindset can dismiss something they don't immediately understand as the mere opinion or taste of someone else, denying the opportunity to share in solidarity with a human being that is unlike yourself. At worst he becomes self-righteous and judgmental. Wallowing in his own little world, he curses that which he does not understand as either elitist or stupid. He becomes a slave to every popular prejudice, bias, fad, and ill-feeling. It is an intellectual life of stunted growth.

As someone in his twenties, I am appalled at the sheer intellectual complacency and mediocrity of my peers. Somehow, “living life” means getting punch drunk at every opportunity. But you don't get punch drunk because you love life. You get punch drunk to obliterate your consciousness and thoughts. You do it to escape the responsibility of being in control of yourself, of being responsible for your own decisions. You do it because your mental world is so barren and boring that oblivion is the most preferable condition. You do it because you want to escape everything. You do it because your time is so meaningless that the highest purpose is the most efficient and effective method of merely expending time.

My idea of living is not to obliterate the scarce moments of consciousness that I have on this earth. My idea of living life to the fullest is to slow down time, to take in every sight and sound and shape and color and impression, to grasp those fleeting thoughts, to clearly glimpse for a moment the reality that is ever rushing by in a blur, and to experience as many moments of clarity that I can. Living life is to reach that acme of consciousness, that point where your awareness and perception of every myriad detail becomes so full and heavy that the minds begs to burst.

One of the best ways to do this is to read books and poems that are challenging, that are on a different plane of intellect and consciousness. In these rich texts, every word, every phrase, shaded with a multitude of nuance and meaning, becomes a world unto itself. It transports the mind to worlds unimaginable, worlds not bound by space or time or shapes or things, but by the farthest reaches of human consciousness. Yes, you may stumble about when you visit these strange worlds, like a visitor in a alien land, or a person trying to speak a second language. But the experience of worlds unimaginable is worth that little awkwardness and uncertainty.

Words transport the mind best, because unlike images, words inescapably have connotations. You can have a picture of a sunset that is just a picture of a sunset, but in writing the sunset must be constructed, word by word, each word a kaleidoscope of meaning, so that a simple sunset becomes a revelation of something so much more. Someone once said that reading is an activity that forces you to make judgments at every line. A good and challenging book does this; a mediocre book expresses itself in cliches, stock phrases, stock characters, and stereotypes, which are anti-thoughts, denying you the ability to make judgments and to think for yourself. Mediocre books trap you in your own worlds, rather than transporting you into the sublime. Mediocre books limit the range of consciousness, whereas great books expand our existence.

Daily experiences don't quite suffice either in expanding consciousness. In our daily experiences there is no time to stop and ponder, to think and to contemplate, to derive meaning from the experience. These experiences are dictated by compromise and expediency; that is why we always express ourselves so crudely in daily speech. Books, poems, plays, however, are experiences, real or imagined, made meaningful and true by the authors who construct these experiences in carefully chosen words in their most beautiful and pure combinations after hours of contemplation and reflection. A great writer can transform the mundane into something sublime. A writer like Shakespeare can elevate us out of the mundane, into the sublime, but he can only do that if you have the courage and fortitude to meet him at the mountaintop where he stands.