Should high school students have to read Shakespeare?

[DuskyRose]

I've never been fond of reading Shakespeare, and can testify to the fact that it was a huge-turn off for most of my classmates in high school. Most didn't read for pleasure, and "Romeo and Juliet" was pure torture for them. No way were they going to touch anything else "Classic" after that. I'm a reader, and even then I rolled my eyes and wished it was all done and over with. Scripts are not novels.

Scripts are dry, dull things without any life until the actors and directors get a hold of it. It's meant to be seen and heard, and the script created only for the actors. Too much is missing when the actors are left out.

I'm all for telling the story to the students, and seeing the play or the movie, then going to the text. But reading the plays cold? I've never seen the point in that.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by DuskyRose

Scripts are dry, dull things without any life until the actors and directors get a hold of it. It's meant to be seen and heard, and the script created only for the actors. Too much is missing when the actors are left out.

I'm all for telling the story to the students, and seeing the play or the movie, then going to the text. But reading the plays cold? I've never seen the point in that.

Generally I agree with you about scripts, but Shakespeare is different. His writing is pure poetry.

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

Generally I agree with you about scripts, but Shakespeare is different. His writing is pure poetry.

For some, who've had time to get used to reading them and know the plays already. I can see why some would see them that way.

For me, they're just scripts that are hard to follow when you don't have the vocabulary down and aren't sure what's going on anyway.

[spellbanisher]

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Do you need to know specialized vocabulary to understand that?

"'Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,
Nor arm nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
and for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself."

Is "tis" really such a confusing word? Or Thy? I can understand doff, but that is one word.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to..."

"O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times."

I am not trying to be rude or snarky. I just don't think you need to understand everything in Shakespeare to get what's going on in the plot, or to be able to appreciate the beauty, power, and mastery of the language without the aid of actors and directors. It does not really require any specialized vocabulary, except for thou and thee and tis, but are those words really that difficult to understand? He writes in the same language that you and I speak and write in. Sure, there are words in Shakespeare that you do not know, but what book contains no words that you will never have to look up? Is the ability to use a dictionary a lost skill? The best way to learn new words, to expand your vocabulary, and therefore your mastery of the language, is through reading. It is just pure laziness that students don't want want to read something because it "has a lot of big words."

Additionally, school is not supposed to be fun or easy. Should students not be taught math because it is hard? Biology? Physics? Chemistry? Foreign languages? Computers? Why is English the only subject that is supposed to be all fun and games? If anything, it should be the most challenging and demanding subject, since it is the one subject that we will use for the rest of our lives, and since language is the fundamental way we communicate with others.

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

I am not trying to be rude or snarky. I just don't think you need to understand everything in Shakespeare to get what's going on in the plot, or to be able to appreciate the beauty, power, and mastery of the language without the aid of actors and directors.

For you. Not everyone enjoys poetry, nor reading Shakespeare out of context. I only recognize some of what you've quoted, and the rest mean nothing because I have no context. Glad you appreciate it, but not my thing.

The point is that not everyone will see it that way, nor get anything out of reading it cold. Once you know what's going on, then you can take the time to break down the text and see the skill in it.

Unless reading it cold has left you... cold.

Shakespeare wrote plays, not novels. I think students should be introduced to his work the way it was meant to be seen. Then bring in the scripts once they understand the plot.

English doesn't have to be easy, but it doesn't have to be so hard that once the class is over, people swear off of the subject matter. Which is what usually happens when it's not taught well.

[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.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by 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?

It was pounded out of them in their younger years, when they quickly learned that they got rewarded for RIGHT ANSWERS and penalized for anything else.

Any pack of 5- and 6-year-olds in school will consider any new material given them as a challenge, a fascinating topic for "what can I learn from this; is it fun; what can you do with it?" By five years later, they've learned to narrow their focus down to "what will I be tested on?"

Teaching US public-school kids to *enjoy* literature (setting aside the issue of whether a play should be studied as text or enactment) requires a subversion of the entire grade system. They're not graded on "enjoyment," so they don't put any effort into it. (And enjoyment takes effort. It takes relaxation, which can be deadly to their grades in other topics. It takes time, which they're not often given.) They're not graded on "understanding," either; they're graded on lists of facts and the ability to generate meaningful-sounding phrases with the right buzzwords. And they're expected to forget most of those in the space of about a month.

Much of the problem comes down to: is the point to teach them the importance of Shakespeare in the English-speaking history of art & literature, or is it to teach them to enjoy and understand some of Shakespeare's plays? They can't be taught the same way, and the second can't be taught in a graded classroom setting. The moment a teacher establishes grades for "understanding," the kids will start churning out buzzword-laden essays, just as they've been instructed to do for years.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

Generally I agree with you about scripts, but Shakespeare is different. His writing is pure poetry.

I never could read Shakespeare. Mostly because I hate reading poetry. It's not the language, it's not the words. It's the form. I just can't read it. I'll see disjointed sentences, and not the whole. So, I won't understand the story.

Originally Posted by Cyberman tM

Guilt by association.
Shakespeare is horribly hard to read. -> Reading is hard. -> Reading is no fun. -> Why read anything at all if all it gets me is a headache and is annoying?

Yep, exactly.

Originally Posted by Yolina

But surely by the time they get to read Shakespeare, they have also read other books that they have enjoyed?

When I went to highschool here, in the Netherlands, we had for every language you took a reading list. I had Dutch (mandatory) and English (one foreign language was also mandatory). For Dutch, we had to read 3 books from the middle ages, 3 books from the renaissance, etc., till the modern day. In total we had to read about 20 or so books, all from a limited list. I hated it. Even now, when I see or hear about those books I had to read back then, I shudder.

Yet, for English, we had to read 10 books. And we were free to chose our books. The teacher did have a list, for those people that needed it, but it wasn't the complete list. The only requirement was that the book was an original English book. I ended up reading 1984 and Animal Farm, but also Shogun by James Clavell and the Clan of the Cavebears by Jean M. Auel. All in the original language. These weren't easy books, considering I'm not a native speaker, and I loved it. I read the rest of the series by Auel too, that year (and they were not allowed on the list of 10 you had to read, as you could only read one book per author).

I still hardly read Dutch books, at all. I just can't stand it anymore. But I devour English books. Had I been allowed to pick my own books for Dutch, just as I had been allowed to pick my own books in English, I might have appreciated the Dutch authors more. But even after more than 20 years, the association to those books I had to read back then, stops me from reading new books.

Originally Posted by Yolina

I admit I have problems understanding the attitude that "if something is a bit difficult, I'm not going to bother and just give up instead. "

It's not the difficulty. Make it a challenge and they'll read it. Make it an order and they'll give up.

But I must say, when I was an exchange student in the US, I was shocked by the level of reading done by the senior year of High School. They had trouble reading books I had finished by the time I was 14. In English...

[wyndslash]

i only encountered shakespeare in modern media. we didn't take it in high school (or we did, but only romeo and juliet). we were mostly reading Christian books (as it is a religious school). but i remembered writing about the guy for a paper. that said, i wish i could have had an English prof back then who had imparted to us a love for reading and analyzing texts.

[Yolina]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

When I went to highschool here, in the Netherlands, we had for every language you took a reading list. I had Dutch (mandatory) and English (one foreign language was also mandatory). For Dutch, we had to read 3 books from the middle ages, 3 books from the renaissance, etc., till the modern day. In total we had to read about 20 or so books, all from a limited list. I hated it. Even now, when I see or hear about those books I had to read back then, I shudder.

That's when it gets interesting as we can see how things are taught in different countries - though in my case we're talking more than 20 years ago! In France we had to take 2 compulsory foreign languages: the first one at around 12 years old I think - normally English but some schools did offer German as well, and a second one got added on a couple of years later - usual choice would have been English (for those decided to go with German first!), German, Spanish, Italian and some schools had Russian too. I also had to do Latin for a couple of years, didn't particulary enjoy that but it hasn't traumatised me either (and I *still* remember bits of it)

For French classes we didn't have a choice - we were told "we're going to study X book" and that was it - all classics, nothing modern, though I couldn't now say exactly which books we did, I remember Rabelais, Moliere, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo. No always fun or entertaining, but again it never put me off reading, it just had to be done and that was that. Oh and we did Balzac too - I absolutely hated Balzac Plenty of more entertaining books available in the school library (which is how I discovered Ismail Kadare's books when I was 15, it's now 23 years later and I still buy them, he is probably my favourite writer).

Yet, for English, we had to read 10 books. And we were free to chose our books. The teacher did have a list, for those people that needed it, but it wasn't the complete list. The only requirement was that the book was an original English book. I ended up reading 1984 and Animal Farm, but also Shogun by James Clavell and the Clan of the Cavebears by Jean M. Auel. All in the original language. These weren't easy books, considering I'm not a native speaker, and I loved it. I read the rest of the series by Auel too, that year (and they were not allowed on the list of 10 you had to read, as you could only read one book per author).

Reading books in foreign languages wasn't part of our curiculum - lots of grammar though from what I can remember! However (and luckily for me) one of my English teachers realised that my English was much better than anyone else in the class, so she started lending me books in English to read instead of me just sitting there getting bored to death going over something I already knew.

I still hardly read Dutch books, at all. I just can't stand it anymore. But I devour English books. Had I been allowed to pick my own books for Dutch, just as I had been allowed to pick my own books in English, I might have appreciated the Dutch authors more. But even after more than 20 years, the association to those books I had to read back then, stops me from reading new books.

Even though I've been in the UK for nearly 18 years, I still buy plenty of French books (and obviously lots of English books too). There's just so many out there to choose from, I wouldn't let a few books I was made to read and didn't like ruin the enjoyment of the many others I can choose to read!

But I must say, when I was an exchange student in the US, I was shocked by the level of reading done by the senior year of High School. They had trouble reading books I had finished by the time I was 14. In English...

That's rather worrying...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I never could read Shakespeare. Mostly because I hate reading poetry. It's not the language, it's not the words. It's the form. I just can't read it. I'll see disjointed sentences, and not the whole. So, I won't understand the story.

.....

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It was pounded out of them in their younger years, when they quickly learned that they got rewarded for RIGHT ANSWERS and penalized for anything else.

This might be true. This would also explain why so many people are afraid to think for themselves. They are taught that there is a "right answer," if only they go and find it, like in a cliffnotes.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Any pack of 5- and 6-year-olds in school will consider any new material given them as a challenge, a fascinating topic for "what can I learn from this; is it fun; what can you do with it?" By five years later, they've learned to narrow their focus down to "what will I be tested on?"

Partially true, but I think that if you give a kid a choice between playing video games and reading, they will probably choose video games. Kids want to do what is fun, not necessarily what is best. If they did do what is best, you would not have to force them to brush their teeth and eat their vegetables.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Teaching US public-school kids to *enjoy* literature (setting aside the issue of whether a play should be studied as text or enactment) requires a subversion of the entire grade system. They're not graded on "enjoyment," so they don't put any effort into it. (And enjoyment takes effort. It takes relaxation, which can be deadly to their grades in other topics. It takes time, which they're not often given.)

Well, they don't have to be taught to "enjoy" literature. There is a difference between enjoyment and appreciation. I don't have to enjoy surgery to appreciate its importance and the skill involved in it. Additionally, enjoyment is often dependent on mastery and skill. In other words, the better you get at something the more enjoyable it becomes, as well as fulfilling. Learning to ride a bike sucks. You fall. Again and again. You scrape your knees and elbows. You get bruised. You crash into curbs (hopefully not cars). But when you get good at it it is fun, exhilarating, liberating, and natural. Learning to read Shakespeare is a skill that requires practice and patience. Admittedly, most teachers probably don't teach Shakespeare well, but that is the fault of the teacher and not of the bard.

Something else to consider is that you don't have to enjoy something, you don't even have to like it, to get benefits from it. My college required everyone take at least one biology class. The intro to biological sciences class was very hard and required memorizing lots and lots of technical terms and processes. Not only did students have to learn hundreds of definitions, but they also had to remember and draw models on the tests, so it required the ability to memorize pictures as well. The class was unyielding and unforgiving. Either you knew the material and passed, or you didn't know the material and you failed. Almost every student who passed the class was forced to develop new study skills and habits, and many could attest that even though they didn't develop a love of biology, they developed skills and habits that aided their success in their college careers and beyond.

It is important to get students to do things they don't want to do, because in life there are lots of things you have to do that you may want not want to do, so you might as well learn to tackle these things head on. I say students should have to read some books that they may not like, if only to teach them this reality. The big question, however, is whether Shakespeare should be the one we throw under the bus to teach that lesson.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

They're not graded on "understanding," either; they're graded on lists of facts and the ability to generate meaningful-sounding phrases with the right buzzwords. And they're expected to forget most of those in the space of about a month.

That wasn't my experience in English classes, but obviously I can't speak for everyone. When English is taught well it teaches you to think, analyze, and to communicate complex ideas effectively. Probably the best way to do this is to get students to write essays on the text, essays that force them to make original readings and arguments over the text, arguments supported by sound analysis and evidence. In my experience using “buzzwords” in an essay was the fastest way to get an F. The teachers I had didn't want a rehash of someone other person's arguments; they didn't want the opinions of Cliffnotes; they wanted their students to show that they could read between the lines, dig beneath the surface, derive meaning from an ambiguous text, and then to communicate that meaning with lucid language and to support their arguments with evidence. In other words, the goal was to teach both critical thinking and communication skills, especially in situations where ideas are not black and white.

The counter to this point that students often make is that teachers will grade them on “right views” rather than on the quality of their arguments. Again, I find this argument, for the most part, to be bollocks. I have written many essays where the teacher wrote on my paper “I disagree with you, I think you are wrong,” but on all of them I got A's. In those same classes I had peers who said that the only reason they got C's or worse was because the teacher disagreed with their views.

This all points to the problem that most people with the notion of an opinion: “I have my opinion, you have your opinion, there is no right or wrong, just opinions.” This is a profoundly undemocratic view, which seems paradoxical, because one would think that a “respect” of everyone's opinions would be the ultimate form of democracy. But it is profoundly disrespectful, not to mention demeaning, to dismiss another person's “opinions” merely because it is not your own. Debate it. Discuss it. Come to a middle ground or consensus. Dignify it with your attention and intellectual efforts, with your arguments, but don't dismiss it altogether like it is nothing but a fleeting fancy, like we are all just nobodies with nobody opinions.

None of us is an island. Everything we do, or fail to do, reverberates throughout society. Other people's beliefs and opinions can and do affect you. As a democracy it is important to be able to discuss ideas and to communicate our own and to ultimately come to some consensus on some of them, or to at least yield to the majority as long as they are not infringing on our rights.

Additionally, you may not be able to debate the rightness or wrongness of an opinion, but you can debate the validity, the sense, and the effects of that opinion. For instance, you could say it is good to eat only food that you think tastes good because we should all ultimately do what is pleasurable. That is an opinion; there is no objective measurement of what is good

. But what if the only food you find pleasurable is junk food? Is it still good? Well, there is no objective answer. But you say it brings pleasure, but does it? Suppose you spend one hour eating a day, and there are sixteen waking hours in a day. That's one hour of eating, and fifteen hours of doing other things. Is that one hour of immense pleasure really worth fifteen hours of sluggishness and fatigue? Suppose you find all healthy food to be nasty. Is that one hour of misery not worth the fifteen hours of feeling energetic, vigorous, and euphoric? In this case your opinion may not be wrong, but it is certainly invalid by your own logic, since the pleasure foods seem to bring more pleasure than displeasure. And what about the long term effects. What about diabetes, and heart disease, and obesity? What about the pains those conditions provide, in addition to the humongous costs they will amass that will deprive you the means of buying other pleasurable stuff, or of aging gracefully and happily?

The problem is that most people are unable to deeply analyze any opinion, or belief, or theory, or argument. It is mostly shallow thinking developed from a life of avoiding any thoughts, texts, ideas, arguments, or opinions that might be discomfiting, esoteric, complex, controversial, inconvenient, or foreign. We only care about what is easy and “relatable.” The problem is not that we fail to train our students to think. It is that we train them how not to think. Even worse, when we pander to their tastes(nothing wrong with personal taste, but it shouldn't be the basis of a curriculum), or allow them to read only what they will find enjoyable, we legitimize this anti-thinking perspective, that all that matters is what they find pleasurable and easy.


You could argue that critical thinking can be taught with any text, that it does not have to be Shakespeare. This is true, but it is important that you try to analyze things that are foreign to your own experiences, that are not immediately understandable, that you do not necessarily relate to. Studying someone like Shakespeare expands your critical faculties; it develops your ability to understand different uses of language and different ways of thinking. Sometimes you have to struggle to understand something, to grasp its complexity, nuance, connotations, and implications. Even the things we think are simple are often not so simple, and Shakespeare is one of the best exercises for your mind. The inability to understand and analyze difficult or complex or foreign concepts is endemic in our own society. People can't understand anything unless it is packaged into slogans and thirty second sound bytes.

Additionally, the problem with studying contemporary authors is that you do not know if they are worth studying. Every generation and culture has its own perspectives and biases. But a classic work transcends those generations, and it creates a common culture that connects us to our past and to the future. I don't know if Stephanie Meyers, Dan Brown, Stephen King, or J.K. Rowling have anything truly worthy to offer. Only time will tell. But their work could be nothing more than ephemera, fads, trends, and reflections of only current perceptions. In another generation they could be considered useless or laughable, if not altogether forgotten. We should try to break students out of their parochialism, not nurture it.

The most important reason you study Shakespeare, especially if you live in an English-speaking country, is that he is the greatest writer in the history of the language. His words, not the actions or interpretations of actors, but the words themselves, have resounded for centuries. If you are going to study writing, why not study the greatest writer? If you are going to learn how to communicate, why not learn from the writer that can still speak to us about human nature hundreds of years after he is dead? Generations have come and gone, each with their own perspectives and realities, but something in Shakespeare is transcendent, there is something in him that connects us to those who have lived before us, and to those that will come after. The endurance of his works is proof that there is continuity in the affairs of humanity, that there is something about us that endures through the ages. Ideally, we could study Homer, but that cannot be done unless you can read Ancient Greek; otherwise, you are not studying his words but another person's interpretation. With Shakespeare, we can read his words. By studying the master, we can learn the power and capabilities of the language that we use.

I conclude this post with a quote from Bertrand Russell, on the majesty of the past, which I think applies to literature:

“This is the reason why the Past has such magical power. The beauty of its motionless and silent pictures is like the enchanted purity of late autumn, when the leaves, though one breath would make them fall, still glow against the sky in golden glory. The Past does not change or strive; like Duncan, after life's fitful fever it sleeps well; what was eager and grasping, what was petty and transitory, has faded away, the things that were beautiful and eternal shine out of it like stars in the night. Its beauty, to a soul not worthy of it, is unendurable...”

[sbarton582]

Personally I find Shakespere horribly tedious. I could not understand what was going on when we read it in high school without the benifit of the in class discussion. I wish we never had to read any of it.

BUT there are many many people out there who passionatly love Shakespere and without never having had a first experience with it these people may have never fallen in love. I think it is wonderful to be passionate about anything and everything.

The job is high school should be to provide a well rounded experience and that includes all types of literature. From high school I personally loved 1984, not a natural choice for me, and I am sure there are people out there who hated it.

Also the Danes/Dicaprio version on Romeo and Juliet was very good. It had the original language and the whole story. It is good to because I probably appeals to kids better.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Yolina

That's when it gets interesting as we can see how things are taught in different countries - though in my case we're talking more than 20 years ago! In France we had to take 2 compulsory foreign languages: the first one at around 12 years old I think - normally English but some schools did offer German as well, and a second one got added on a couple of years later - usual choice would have been English (for those decided to go with German first!), German, Spanish, Italian and some schools had Russian too. I also had to do Latin for a couple of years, didn't particulary enjoy that but it hasn't traumatised me either (and I *still* remember bits of it)

Oh, the first year, I had Dutch, English and French, the second Dutch, English, French and German. The third year, the same. The fourth year, you made (it's been changed about a dozen times the last 20 or so years...) a choice about what subjects to take. And that's when you had to start reading those books in those languages you took.

Originally Posted by Yolina

For French classes we didn't have a choice - we were told "we're going to study X book" and that was it - all classics, nothing modern, though I couldn't now say exactly which books we did, I remember Rabelais, Moliere, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo. No always fun or entertaining, but again it never put me off reading, it just had to be done and that was that.

That's the same for me (mostly), but then, I've always loved reading. But can you imagine somebody who likes to read, but nothing more than that? And that person is also an adolescent who will always push against the rules and regulations?

Originally Posted by Yolina

Reading books in foreign languages wasn't part of our curiculum - lots of grammar though from what I can remember! However (and luckily for me) one of my English teachers realised that my English was much better than anyone else in the class, so she started lending me books in English to read instead of me just sitting there getting bored to death going over something I already knew.

I even had to read those French and German books the first three years (or 4 if you did another branch of our high school system), but those are mostly the easy books, children's books. Once you got to the last two years, the difficulty shot up and you were required to read "adult" books, mostly literature. And let me tell you, Dutch literature is boring! (though, I did find the one and only science fiction book that was also part of the list! Can't remember what it was called, though...)

Originally Posted by Yolina

Even though I've been in the UK for nearly 18 years, I still buy plenty of French books (and obviously lots of English books too). There's just so many out there to choose from, I wouldn't let a few books I was made to read and didn't like ruin the enjoyment of the many others I can choose to read!

Most Dutch writers write horror, or drama. Or literature. Can't stand any of those. The last mostly because of that childhood trauma

Originally Posted by Yolina

That's rather worrying...

Yes, it was... But who cared, those who read the worst, were the best football players!

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

They're not graded on "understanding," either; they're graded on lists of facts and the ability to generate meaningful-sounding phrases with the right buzzwords.

Precisely. Why read it when I can get the notes from PinkMonkey or SparkNotes and have an even better understanding of it, which ensures I'm more likely to get a good grade in the class?

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I never could read Shakespeare. Mostly because I hate reading poetry. It's not the language, it's not the words. It's the form. I just can't read it. I'll see disjointed sentences, and not the whole. So, I won't understand the story.

At the risk of being called uncouth, I have the same issues. When it's in paragraph format I can read it and understand it, and I even enjoy the Shakespeare I've read. But the disjointed and hanging lines really throw me. I'm also that person who completely skips over poetry in fantasy novels, even though I love the fantasy genre.