Should high school students have to read Shakespeare?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by DMB

I think it's more complicated than just gaining French vocabulary. Middle English is very different grammatically from Old English and is really a sort of creole.

I would disagree with the "creole" designation; it really is mostly a matter of French vocabulary. Middle High German is also quite different from Old High German in roughly the same way that OE differs from ME. I.e., OHG is almost completely incomprehensible to a modern German speaker in the same way that OE is incomprehensible to a modern English speaker. MHG, by contrast, can be sort of halfway read by a modern German speaker in the exact same way that ME can sort of be halfway read by a modern English speaker.

(Norse also had a significant effect on English as well, since there was about 200 years of the Danelaw. )

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I've always loved Graves and Hodges for building the idiosyncrasies of the English language's history into their guide to writing it logically. Your comment about the French (i.e., Latinate) vocabulary suggests you might have read that book. If so, perhaps I'm not alone in admiring it.

No, I'm afraid I haven't come across that particular book, but I've had a long-standing interest in the history of the English language, and hence have acquired a small degree of knowledge of the subject.

[DMB]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I would disagree with the "creole" designation; it really is mostly a matter of French vocabulary. Middle High German is also quite different from Old High German in roughly the same way that OE differs from ME. I.e., OHG is almost completely incomprehensible to a modern German speaker in the same way that OE is incomprehensible to a modern English speaker. MHG, by contrast, can be sort of halfway read by a modern German speaker in the exact same way that ME can sort of be halfway read by a modern English speaker.

(Norse also had a significant effect on English as well, since there was about 200 years of the Danelaw. )

Well I'm not a linguist, but I have come across some who think it is a creole. English loses much of its inflexions and adopts French word order as well as the "s" plural. That's a pretty large grammatical change and it is a change in the direction of French.

Given that after the Conquest all kinds of official business was transacted and written in French or Latin, I suppose one could argue that with the decline in written English the spoken English, initially not used by the ruling class, was reduced to a sort of lowest common denominator. One notices in modern German, for instance, that not everyone correctly pronounces all the noun inflexions. Similarly, in modern French, there is often a loss of grammatical accuracy in the spoken language. But I tend to like the theory that Norman nobles were brought up in infancy by English nurses and thereby learnt a sort of simplified, childish English.

[ebusinesstutor]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Fair enough, but I don't think you can create these individuals without giving them a real education. It's hard to be creative when you don't know anything.

We don't teach our children to make handaxes because there are better alternatives available - like Grunfors axes from high carbon steel.

We still teach Shakespeare because there are not yet any better alternatives. David Weber might be easier to read, but he's not Shakespeare.

Really, so 400 years of writing are nothing more than garbage and there is nothing worth reading of learning about in school except one author 400 years ago?

Unless they have a decent background in playwriting, they will just produce feel-good garbage. That's not real creativity. Nor is putting on a play at school as part of an assignment particularly creative.

People learn by a combination of being shown and doing themselves. There first play may be feel-good garbage. Shakespeare's first play may not have been very good either. But we we help create the next generation of authors, playwrights, actors and producers by teaching them and letting them create. They will never get better at it until they try it.

You are begging the question. It is much more likely that people who are well-educated will continue to learn and adapt once they've finished formal schooling because they will have a much more substantial foundation to build upon. There's no such thing as creativity in a vacuum, and you can't be truly creative unless you have a real basis of knowledge.

And I'm also skeptical that schools can even teach creativity and adaptability.

They can only do this if they have some basis to build upon. And I still see no evidence that reading Shakespeare won't lead to creative, adaptable people.

What evidence is there that reading Shakespeare automatically makes you more creative and adaptable? Knowledge alone doesn't make you adaptable. There is a wealth of knowledge available to us through libraries and the Internet, but that doesn't automatically make us adaptable. Adaptability comes from learning to think logically and creatively and to find solutions to problems. It is a way of thinking and a philosophy we need to learn and to have taught to us.

I don't see the world being changed by uneducated people. And I don't think that substituting something else for Shakespeare in HS is more likely to make people creative or adaptable.

Who said anything about uneducated people? My original post said that I felt our education system should work to create "whole" individuals, creative, adaptable and balanced with good research and social skills. This IS their education. They learn how to apply the vast amount of knowledge available to create their own lives. Effectively substituting this way of learning for Shakespeare would definitely make people more creative and adaptable.