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We Have Been Here BeforeDateline: 24th September, 2006The new RSC campaign to improve the teaching of Shakespeare in schools is hardly new. Back in the late eighties and early nineties there was Rex Gibson who spearheaded a campaign to make Shakespeare more accessible to schoolchildren by creating lessons which are relevant to both WS and to the lives of kids. The book Shakespeare in Schools (1990), which he edited, is still a source of good classroom ideas. Then there's Shakespeare 4 Kidz, who for ten years or more have been touring workshops and large scale productions of musical versions of major plays, aimed at primary schools in particulat, as well as providing the texts, the music (sheet and CD) and all kinds of help for schools to do their own productions. In South Africa, also in the nineties, Walter Saunders produced a series of modernised version of a number of plays, using both paraphrase and the original text, aimed at secondary schools. And then there was the BBC's Animated Shakespeare, 30-minute versions of a number of the plays which provided an easy and effective introduction. Not all that long ago, too, the English Shakespeare Company's education wing, under Malachi Bogdanov, produced some productions aimed at schools and using the original text but making the plays relevant to young people. I remember in particular an excellent Romeo and Juliet and its associated workshops really got beneath the skin of the play. And did soemone mention Charles and Mary Lamb's Little Tales from Shakespeare? Almost 200 years old, that was one of the first attempts to make the Bard accessible to children. No, concern to make Shakespeare accessible to children and young people is not new. Every single one of those attempts mentioned above - and I am willing to bet there are more which I haven't heard of (do we count Baz Lurhman's Romeo + Juliet?) - and all had some success. "All had some success"... and yet it is still felt (and with some justice) that such initiatives are still needed. Why? The main problem, of course, is that Shakespeare is taught as part of the English curriculum and, in spite of some nods of recognition that the plays are meant to be performed, exam questions and coursework assignments are still academically orientated, even those which are in some way performance related have to be answered in writing: "If you were directing X, how would you...?". And English teachers (in the secondary sector at any rate) are academically trained. Many are not comfortable with the practical approach needed, nor have they had the training. Some can do it, of course, but others find it very difficult. Then there's another problem: I found - to my horror! - recently that a degree in English does not any more necessarily mean a knowledge of Shakespeare. A young English teacher, whom I asked about the plays set for the Key Stage 3 SATs this year, admitted that the only Shakespeare plays she knew were three: a GCSE set book, an A Level set book and one she had read for her degree. She had never read any of the Histories, nor did she know anything about The Tempest - "Is it a bit like Twelfth Night?" she asked. (Well, they both have a storm at sea...) If that's the case amongst teachers who are recently (in the last five years) out of university, how can we expect them to teach Shakespeare successfully? Of course, it is possible that my sample of one is so totally unrepresentative as to be meaningless - as much anecdotal "evidence" is - but it does worry me. And it's not just English degrees: a young actress of my acquaintance, who'd done a performing arts degree, had not at any time in her course touched upon Shakespeare - and she was specialising in acting! Then there are the practical problems of doing practical lessons in rooms that are set up for acadmic work: clear away all the desks and chairs to the edges of the room (and then replace them before the end of the lesson); finding space for group work in the restriced area you're left with; keeping the noise down so that other lessons aroundabout are not disturbed. Of course there are ways around all the practical problems, but they all involve a lot of extra work for the teacher and, often, more disturbance around the school. I suspect that the RSC proposals will involve kids' seeing Shakespeare productions. And so they should. But where? There are parts of the country which are not near a theatre where Shakespeare is performed. and even when there are, there's tickets to pay for, transport to pay for... And yes, there are touring productions which come into schools, but pay for a couple of those in a year and you've taken a substantial chunk out of the departmental budget. The great joy of the work of Rex Gibson and his collaborators is that they devised approaches which did not disrupt the timetable or the work of classes round about, and which - vitally! - did not involve huge costs, either to the kids' parents or to the schools. And if the experience being offered involves taking kids out of school for a half-day or even a day, how do you mollify the science or meths or other teachers who complain they are losing valuable lesson time? Schools, and therefore teachers, are judged by their exam results, so you're not going to get a lot of sympathy from other staff who see the possibility of their results being adversely affected by the English department's attempts to improve theirs! Yes, it is important that we make Shakespeare more accessible, but it's a damned sight more complex than just making lessons on him more interesting!
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