Should shakespeare be removed from School curriculum?

Question

After helping my 15 yr old son with "Romeo and juliet" I realised how irrelevant,boring and tedious shakespeare is,should they now remove something written in a language even I as an englishman cannot fathom out,glad I did the Crucible by Arthur Miller for my gcse eng literature after all if the educational institutes didnt buy the books for study no one else would apart from a few fans of "classical" literature.

Answer 1

personally, i do not like shakespeare and this is purely because i have done it from yr 10 and in yr 12. i find the language hard to understand and would agree with you that it is time that they should change to something more exciting and worth learning about. i think that it has been kept on the curriculum for too long.  

Answer 2

I don't think it matters any more - the school exam & teaching system in the UK is so bloody awful, no prospective employers pay any attention to how well people do in schools.

I live in Wales, we've just had a 99% pass rate at A level, absolute bull! I know some REALLY thick people with A & B grades who can barely spell. I have two daughters in high school, they have some teachers who should be stacking shelves in Netto, let alone teaching. (My brother's a teacher - his two A level classes have all had grade A results).

The pass rate for a GCSE exam is now 35%, when I took my exams it was 65%. You can also pass any GCSE subject on coursework, so there's no need to sit exams for a pass.

You can't be marked down for spelling & grammar in any exam now, so you don't even need to be able to write!

Talk about 'dumbing down'!

Answer 3

Children should be taught how much of a pleasure reading is and, I´m sorry to offend anyone but Shakespeare is not the way to go about that. I studied three of his complete works in school while one would have been sufficient to get the idea and if anyone was interested in more then they could have taken up reading Shakespeare as a hobby. I found his texts tedious, difficult and not enjoyable at all. There´s  loads of literature which is a lot more suitable to fire the imaginations of teenagers in 2008. Luckily, it did not put me off reading and I now prefer a good book to the mindless c**p that´s on TV.

Answer 4

NO, NO NO, NOT AT ALL, ROMEO AND JULIET IS OUR LEGACY, SHAKE-SPEAR SHOULD BE REMEMBERED FOR THAT FANTASTIC WRITER AND ARTIST HE ONCE WAS, I THINK IT HAS ALOT TO STILL LEARN YOUNGSTERS AND YOU'LL DEPRIVE THEM FROM LEARNING THIS MAGNIFICENT PIECE OF WRITING, I LOVE IT I HAVE READ THE BOOK NUMEROUS OF TIMES, MY SCHOOL DAYS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THE SAME WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OF SHAKE-SPEAR, SO HUSH YOUR MOUTH MY DEAR LADY SHAKE-SPEAR STAYS, LOL (JUST MY OPINION LOL) TAKE CARE XXXX

Answer 5

I think you are probably right that Shakespeare is wasted on children.

You need a certain amount of experience of life and some intellectual maturity before you realise how brilliant he is.

Answer 6

No it shouldn't, our greatest playwright, poet, and man of letters. Its not boring, the language is alive, if only you listen to it. Many of the expressions that are in every day use come from Shakespeare. I think that the more we dumb down our language the dumber people will be

most definitely not elitist rubbish, his work will outlast all others, perhaps with the exception of Dickens.

Answer 7

Simple answer required here - No.

Answer 8

No, I think Shakespear is important in school. Nowadays it is crucial that teenagers learn a better way of expressing themselfes, of understanding metaphors and irony and the beauty of language.

The common use 'dictonary' is increasing ever year and most expressions and insulst of anger contain the word fukc and nothing else.

Also, Shakespear teaches very important things to young people (just think about 'The merchant of Venice')

I am foreing and studied Shakespear in english and although I have to admit that it is hard, I did enjoy it.

I do believe though, that nowadays teachers, especially concerning classical literature, do not know how to teach these things and bring them across as interesting.

Nevertheless Shakespear is a big part of english culture and language.  It is important that even in these modern times we recognise all the faccets of language and that we understand the past believes on race, marriage and love.

Shakespear brings across a whole lot of all the above, and therefore I find it important that it is still part of the curriculum.

Btw, maxbe you should get your son to watch the movie 'romeo and Juliet' with Leonardo deCaprio in it. Might bring some fun into the whole learning Shakespear thing.  

Answer 9

I am 100% behind the notion that children should not be forced to do anything irrelevant, boring or tedious.  It would have excused me from gym on all three counts.

Answer 10

The point is Shakespeare wrote plays that were meant to be performed on stage, not studied in English class, but the whole reason you study it is to learn to understand it. If it was fathomable for the average person you wouldn't need to look at it, you'd just glance over it.

But Shakespeare wrote some wonderful things if you look at it in context. The language is incredible for his day; he was the first to write down several words we now use in modern English, and his writing itself was very modern.

Words that are first found in Shakespeare include antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, excellent, eventful, barefaced, lonely, indistinguishable, well-read...I could go on.

And Shakespeare favoured language that is much more recognisable as modern English than his contemporaries. For example, he favoured 'sees' rather than 'seeth', which was considered rather racey in its day. Similarly, he also used 'spoke' to the traditional 'spake', 'goes' to 'goeth'.

He also introduced many phrases into the mainstream English language. For example: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, play fast and loose, be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness, beggar all description, cold comfort, flesh and blood, to be cruel to be kind, pomp and circumstance, tower of strength.

He was a radical in terms of language, much ahead of his time.

And Romeo and Juliet is always going to be relevant; it's the classic tragic love story. How on earth does that go out of date?

Answer 11

ive changed my mind, no it shouldn't be removed, children need to be taught the history of the English language.

Answer 12

Part of the purpose of school is to open young minds to what's out there beyond what's most popular, normal, average, on tv, etc. Many people, especially those who struggle with contemporary English, find the classics to be beyond their grasp. However, there are those 'few fans' as you mentioned who may not have otherwise been exposed.

Removing (or changing) history from our schools in any capacity is a mistake. But because of the low relevancy and the difficulty of grasping some classical literature, it should play a more minor role in the grading process.