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DisSATisfaction with Shakespeare in SchoolsDateline: 10th May, 1998On Tuesday last week (5th May), all 14 year olds (Year 9) throughout the UK were taking their SATs (Standard Assessment Tests) in English. During the afternoon they did the Shakespeare paper, answering questions on Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream or Romeo and Juliet, depending on the choice made for them by their teachers - a choice which, it has to be said, may have been determined by what books the school had in stock, not what was best for the kids! Whilst - I hope! - no one would argue against introducing kids to Shakespeare, I am very far from being convinced that setting a Shakespeare play as an exam subject (especially at the age of 14 - or earlier, actually, for they are 13 when they start the course) is the way to do it. You are more likely to put them off. Now I am speaking as a teacher. Recently (for the Autumn Term, actually, because we were short of a member of staff) I was asked to teach English to a Year 9 class. The Head of Department thought it would be a good idea for me to concentrate on the Shakespeare, since I am primarily a Drama teacher. I had to do Romeo and Juliet with them. Dead! Dead! Dead! Now that could equally describe me, the class and the play. Teaching to the exam - well, you have to: schools are judged by their exam results. That's what league tables are for! - killed the play for them, and very nearly did for me! It got a bit better when I showed them the Zeffirelli film (Boy! has that dated!), but the minute we got back to the grind of line by line explanation, character analysis and so on, that mortuary feeling crept straight back in. In the end I said (but not to them!), "Sod this for a game of soldiers!" and took them out of the classroom into the Drama room and began to explore the play through practical work. We did the Verona Tonight chat show. The kids sat in a circle and I got out a microphone (it wasn't connected to anything but that didn't matter: it's the image that counts) and, as the show host, announced: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Our subject for this evening's show is "Marrying against parents' wishes" and tonight in the studio we have two sets of parents whose children did just that. I want to talk first to Lady Capulet whose daughter Juliet - she's not yet fourteen - did just that....I then picked on one of the girls at random and asked her how she felt about her daughter's marriage. It worked beautifully. Those picked out - on the spur of the moment - to be the parents, the Nurse, and R and J themselves, responded terrifically, and we got a really good "studio" discussion going. Oprah would have been proud! (By the way, I pinched this idea from the English Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare Experience. Thanks, guys!) Then we got out our two video cameras and made a documentary about violence on the streets of Verona. That went pretty well, too, although the studio discussion was, I felt, the most successful part of what we did. Then we went back to the study of the text for the SATs. It all went dead again! Now we did get another English teacher who took over the class (so they sent me to do a bit of IT instead! Don't let him have a bit of free time to prepare lessons or do his admin work, whatever you do!) and she reports the same feeling. In fact, every member of the department feels that the study of Shakespeare is killing the kids' willingness to give his plays a try. A year or two back the Head of English was having difficulty getting Macbeth across to a difficult class (difficult in the sense of ability, not behaviour), so she asked me to do a bit of Drama work with them, built around the play. They flung themselves into it with great energy and enthusiasm, but as soon as they went back to the line by line study.... down like a lead balloon! And it's no good saying, don't do the line by line stuff, because you have to, because your kids have got to reach the required standard in the Key Stage 3 SAT. If they don't, you're obviously a crap teacher in a crap school. So, by diktat from the DfEE we have to work very hard to put kids off Shakespeare. Such total nonsense! I love Shakespeare. I am not advocating not teaching him to 14 year olds (or even younger kids). Nor am I saying that we should never teach his plays in an academic way. I am not even saying we should never do a line by line study. No! All I am saying is that subjecting 13 and 14 year olds to this kind of academic study of Shakespeare will only succeed in destroying any hope of ever, ever making the vast majority of them into - not fans, but people who appreciate what Shakespeare has to offer. So much superb work has been done by people like Rex Gibson (I cannot find anything substantial on him anywhere on the Web!), the ESC, Shakespeare 4 Kidz, and invidual teachers throughout the UK and the rest of the English-speaking world, and yet it is being destroyed by what is essentially a politician's view of what should be taught! Is it any wonder that there is more enthusiasm for Shakespeare in Germany and other European countries, to say nothing of the US, than in the UK? Articles Indices: |
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