Shakespeare Shoulds it still be taught in schools?

Question

This is for my dissertation research, can i have proper answers if you say no can i have a reason thank you

Hey thank you for the response keep posting by all means, just so that you do know i am including this in my research for my dissertation if anyone has any objections (how you can object when you've just given your opinion to the world i dont know) please send me an email and i'll black out your comment when i print it off okies?

Answer 1

without shakespeare, education is not complete
in his plays, u can find a little bit of every person u know... even urself. they're so beautiful, and have lively messages. they teach u history, and help u decide ur future

Answer 2

Yes. Not just good mental exercise, which it is. Shakespeare is sometimes described as "speaking in cliches." This is a joke, really, because so much of Shakespeare has been quoted so often it has become a cliche. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. To be or not to be. The quality of mercy is not strained.

There are thousands of lines that have come down to us, many with somewhat distorted or misinterpreted meanings, such as the famously misconstrued line, "First, we kill all the lawyers." If we are to use the English language to maximum advantage, we need to know the appropriate use of these phrases.

We also need to know what language was like back when people went to plays because they were different from life, and did not expect the players to sound like "normal." They were not normal: they were in a play. All the world's a stage. Some of the plays were labeled "history," but were really not very accurate historically. But then, a history major would have to know the truth about Richard the Third and about Macbeth, and how the distortions in Shakespeare's plays have affected history itself.

Discontinuing any traditional study involves cutting the current crop of students off from a critical part of their heritage. I, for one, would not want to be responsible for a generation of American kids who did not know who Shakespeare was.

Answer 3

Yes I believe that it should but Shakespeare wrote his plays to be acted out not to be read and analysed sitting behind a classroom desk. Teaching it by playing out excerpts in front of the class can turn a boring lesson into an hour of fun. Shakespeare can be very funny and if you see it acted before you you have a much higher chance of understanding the play and also where Shakespeare is coming from. Remember they did discover some evidence of alleged drug taking, or maybe that was a rumour. I am not in any way suggesting that you should get the pupils all stoned before acting or observing the play being acted!!!

Answer 4

I think children should be taught to appreciate literature and our literary heritage. Without knowing why the Bard's works are so important and without a love of leading how can someone appreciate Shakespeare?
To kids today Shakespeare is not relevant because they do not live in a world where the things in his plays matter. In order for Shakespeare to be meaningful then kids should be shown how to appreciate books and plays and art - but that is absent from society these days and as such the great writers of the past Dickens, Bronte, Homer, Sappho... are less and less relevant.
What point is there in looking at eternal truths in the disposable age?

Answer 5

Shakespeare is taught in British faculties both in English literature and English language and he ought to study in all faculties over the global the position English is the first language as many of the English language change into first coined by William Shakespeare which must be a strong sufficient reason in itself.

Answer 6

I absolutely believe that Shakespeare shouild be taught in schools but not solely in literature classes. Shakespeare was a playwright, not a booksmith. His work is best experienced in the theatre, either in the audience or the cast.

As to why? Will Shakespeare formalised and invented great swathes of the English language. His plays speak of birth and death, love and war. All human life is there.

All the world's a stage and the men and women merely players, they have their exits and their entrances and each man in his time plays many parts, his acts being the seven ages. 'As you like it'

Hope it's right, i first read it twenty years ago.

Answer 7

Well Colin0506 your mate might just like Star Trek as that quote is also from ST6 The Undiscovered Country. Either way, I think education standards should be improved across the board (the how's are for another time) but studying Shakespear should certainly form part of that. Much of what he wrote is equally apt for today's world.

Answer 8

Definitely. I love Shakespeare, it was by far my favourite part of my AS level course when we studied a selection of his sonnets.
I'm lucky to live near Stratford-upon-Avon, so I go to the Shakespeare Theatre on a regular basis. I think it's important to see the plays performed (as that is what they were written for!) and this helps motivate people into wanting to study the texts in more detail.

Getting used to the language can be tricky, but knowledge from one text I think, is applicable to all.

I think we should still be taught Shakespeare as he is one of the greatest British writers, something proven by his lasting popularity. However, I do think that instead of studying him for SAT's, GCSE's and AS/A, it is important to study some of the other great writers as well. I think the repeated emphasis on Shakespeare might be what puts people off.

Answer 9

Sure it should. There are only a certain number of story lines in the world, and he uses most of them. Also, even if the language is a little archaic in our time, it's easy to appreciate the stories once you get past it. They are well-crafted, and have had a lot of influence on stories which came after them. If they weren't so good, we wouldn't have so many remakes of them (Romeo and Juliet (1968), Romeo + Juliet, at least 3 famous Hamlets, etc). And my husband is just like Colin0506. Whenever I give the dog a bath in the bathtub, as I let her out he yells, "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!"

Answer 10

Yeah Shakespeare should still be taught in school..I really love some of his Classical writings like Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet...He contributed much to English Literature..

Answer 11

I shouldn't be taught at all as it is a subject for classical students only. The average Joe Soap is not interested in a minority item that quite often they can't make sense of. There are far more worthwhile subjects that are more pertinent to life than than Shakespeare.