this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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If we're going to scrap something from high school to add a tax lesson, let's ditch some literature. Over four years my graduating class studied 5 shakespeare plays and a handful of sonnets. Surely we could have cut out Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest if we still have Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet and Henry V.
Reading comprehension is more important than ever ... And you want to cut the classes that teach it? Why?
I'm unconvinced that Shakespeare is a particularly good exercise in reading comprehension given the vocabulary, phraseology, spelling and grammar is 500 years out of date.
I remember reading Hamlet out loud in class, and that was the last of the plays we studied so we had read some Shakespeare before, and every other thing you're running into a sentence that doesn't work or a word that is NEVER said except in Hamlet like 'contumely" or 'orisons' and you just get a room full of teenagers saying words one by one taking none of it on board.
If anything, learning to understand words from a text without knowing their definition makes it better for that
Hrm I'd argue that regardless of the parlance used in the work, it's still an exercise of reading comprehension, as one is still comprehending the work while reading it.
Especially in something like Shakespeare's case I don't think that's necessarily true, because 1. a lot of the vocabulary is just...not English anymore. Let me ask you: what part of speech is the word "contumely"? Is it a noun? An adverb? An adjective? 2. Not all of the information is there. Shakespeare only ever wrote down the dialog not the stage directions because he told that stuff to his actors in person. Comprehending the play by reading the dialog alone is difficult because the context is missing.
The gravedigger in Hamlet is in the habit of saying "argal." Because he heard someone literate say "ergo" and he uses it right, as a synonym of "therefore" but he doesn't pronounce it right. It's an interesting bit of characterization because it shows the gravedigger maybe should have had a chance at some school. I realized this watching the Kenneth Branaugh production years later when I found it in an old stack of VHS tapes, not in 12th grade listening to my classmate Jeremy try to read it without having it explained to him first. He kept pronouncing it "ARgul" rather than "arGALL" so he never heard himself say the joke.
Perhaps my English teacher could have done a better job conducting this lesson but was this really a useful exercise in reading comprehension?
My money is on "your teacher didn't know the joke either".
I think you may be missing the point that I was trying to make. I agree with your opinion that think Shakespeare can be difficult to read, but, regardless of that, trying to comprehend it is still trying to comprehend it. If one is practicing their reading comprehension, no matter the difficulty of the material, imo it could still be said that they are improving their comprehension. Now, it could be that there is material that is more efficient at improving one's reading comprehension ability than Shakespeare, but I think that's a separate argument.
Nope, that's not how education works. Due to the Principle of Effect, lessons which are too confusing can do more harm than good. If, as some other commenters have suggested, students are arriving to 12th grade English class reading at an elementary school level, handing them a copy of Hamlet isn't going to accomplish anything, it'll just frustrate them, convince them that they really can't do this and they'll just give up. Even honors students who are reading at advanced levels might start second guessing themselves.
Shakespeare's work was all written ~400 years ago, reading a Shakespeare play is an exercise in translation as much as comprehension. Take a copy of Hamlet to a 16 year old, open it to a random page, point to a line and ask a teenager to read it. They'll probably stumble through it. Ask them what it means and they won't have taken it on board.
It may have more of a value in teaching the history of the English language than a reading comprehension exercise.
In 11th and 12th grade English class we mostly focused on themes and such; it was treated more as an art appreciation course than communication practice. And art appreciation should be elective rather than required. If we're really honest with ourselves, the reason we teach Shakespeare in high schools is because English teachers like it, and English teachers majored in English in college because they like it, and there's exactly one job an English degree qualifies you to do: Teach high school English class.
Hell, replace Shakespeare lessons with descriptive or persuasive writing classes.
Hm, this feels like conjecture. Do you have proof of that?
I wasn't arguing that Shakespeare would make the students more interested in literature. I was only arguing that the act of reading, no matter what is being read (within reason), improves one's reading comprehension.
I am a little confused now — is this you agreeing that reading Shakespeare improves reading comprehension?
I can tell you are confused.
The scenario I got in high school was "Here, one or more high school students, is a copy of Hamlet as Shakespeare wrote it preserved down to the punctuation and page layout. Read it just like you read To Kill A Mockingbird." I assert that this is a poorly designed exercise in reading comprehension for modern 21st century English. This exercise will not substantially improve anyone's ability to understand, say, the Pilot's Operating Handbook for a Cessna 172.
I would say exactly the same thing of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, if it was presented to teenagers in its original Middle English. It isn't though; textbooks are printed with the Canterbury Tales translated into modern-ish English. At the very least
becomes
We don't do that with Shakespeare though; it has to be enjoyed in the original nonsense. Which I take as evidence it's an aesthetic choice rather than a practical one.
I would assert that - if you're trying to increase proficiency in reading normal 21st century English as a general life skill - you wouldn't design the lesson like my English teacher did. If that was your goal you'd probably use a modern translation, maybe you'd study Ten Things I Hate About You rather than The Taming Of The Shrew.
Which is why I'll also assert that Literature classes as taught in later high school and into college aren't really designed to be communication proficiency classes but art appreciation classes. Which should be electives like band, orchestra, painting or photography, not required classes like math and science.
The English literature classes I took from my teenage years on all assumed you were proficient at reading.
I'd argue it does the opposite for literacy. You tell some teenager with a third grade reading level to read "thou prithy foresooth bout thy they thou thumb" and they are going to completely check out.
"Man, I can't do this."
What exactly would you want to remove, and what would you propose in its stead, and why?
The only subject that was required for all four years when I was in high school was English, and senior year English was all British literature, so we got Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Bronte's, shit like that.
Honestly I think later high school English classes do more to beat any love of reading teenagers have out of them by force feeding them dire dour old ugly hateful and just plain obsolete shit written by damaged people who lived in a world before the invention of epidemiology so sometimes your neighborhood would die of cholera because someone's pit toilet leaked into the ground water.
Make English 4 if not English 3 electives rather than required. Replace them with a semester of driver's ed, taxes, fire safety, how to safely refrigerate chicken, I can think of a lot of shit that would benefit the world more than having teenagers read a Skakespeare play they don't get aloud.
When Americans already can't read, you're seriously suggesting doing away with requiring English for all 4 years? I understand wanting to change the material, but that just seems really heavy-handed and counterproductive.
If they can't read by junior year of highschool I very much adoubt fucking Shakespeare is going to be the aha moment
Again, material choice is not the issue at hand.
Again (don't know why you said again but ill add it too), if they cant read by junior year I doubt two more years of the same shit is going to help. Is illiteracy an issue? Sure. Should junior and senior year english be mandatory for every student because some of them struggle with reading? No, just make a class to help those kids.
Without a tailored class your just sticking kids who cant read well with more advanced kids in the same class and by senior year that gap has probably grown substantially. How do you make a single class that can challenge good English students and also nurture people struggling with the fundamentals? You don't. The high functioning kids are bored and unengaged and the struggling kids are stressed by how far behind they are, it doesn't help anyone.
Yes it very specifically is. The origin of this thread was someone asking me what I would cut out of the curriculum. Are you always this dishonest?
If it's that bad the problem is earlier than 12th grade and needs to be fixed there. I started flight school in 9th grade, I had no problem reading textbooks that said things like "Aerodynamics of maneuvering flight" in them.
For clarity, are you saying that you don't think that it should be mandatory that English, or any of its derivatives, be taught as a course to children?
I'm questioning the importance of literature class as I remember it taught in late high school.
So, other than literature, are there some English-derived classes that you think would be good to teach?
How are you defining "obsolete" in this context?
Much of the language Shakespeare uses is obsolete to a modern English speaker. Let's start with his use of the archaic second person singular thee thy thou and move on from there to words we don't use anymore like "contumely" or "orisons" and then arrive at metaphors that haven't made sense since the industrial revolution. Shakespeare wrote in English v. 2.3.1, here in the 21st century we speak English v. 6.13.2.
More what I'm getting at, regardless of language used in Shakespeare is whether you think Shakespeare, as a whole, is obsolete. So, iiuc, you aren't saying that you think that Shakespeare, as a whole, is obsolete, but that that the language used within it is, which makes it difficult to read?
I don't think it's possible for the stories Shakespeare told to become obsolete because he wasn't the first or last to tell them. It is my understanding that not a single one of Shakespeare's plays were original works, he retold folk tales, legends, historical events etc. (Hamlet is a Danish legend, Henry V was his attempt at a documentary...) and his versions were good enough and written down enough to become canonized as classics.
But, to a modern audience, Shakespeare's language is 400 years out of date, and not only is it obsolete language, but it's Whedonesque obsolete language. Shakespeare wrote in quippy punny poetry and the bases for a lot of his puns, a lot of the cultural references he makes, we just don't get anymore. Because of all that, I think it's a similar task as reading Chaucer in the original middle English, you can kind of muddle through but you have to keep stopping and figuring out what the hell you just read.
I'm not saying Shakespeare's plays are worthless and should be discarded, but I don't think an average teenager should be expected to read and understand it the way he might a 20th century novel. I think we owe it to students to, the way we do with Chaucer, offer the original and a more modern translation.
If it's used as a reading comprehension exercise I would recommend the script for Ten Things I Hate About You instead of The Taming Of The Shrew, for pretty much exactly this reason.
Really interesting your solution is exactly how I was taught Shakespeare and Beowulf in 10th grade. We read beofulf in the bilingual version, and then read Grendel, a modern retelling (which was hella trippy). We read Hamlet with all the commentary to understand the early English, and then had assignments to "translate" it to modern usage. We watched the Romeo + Juliet with the guns. We watched 10 things I hate about you.
For me there was something valuable about working to understand this person from across the gulf of centuries, and realize that what he was writing about wasn't so different than what we experienced. Hamlet's ambivalence. Romeo's horniness. John Donne's sexy mindfucks... What were we talking about again ?
I disagree that this should be in some form of course. I think that this can be taught in a short afternoon visit by a fire department — it may even be already.
I am convinced beyond internet argument that you wouldn't be better off eliminating a semester of English Literature class from the end of high school and replace it with a semester of "living in the world" lessons that might just be a week of driver's ed, that field trip to the fire department, some first aid, just cram a semester full of basic adulting skills.
We used to call this "Home Economics" but that got stigmatized as the cake baking class girls took while the boys were in shop class, and then women doing housework became a politically charged issue so we deprecated even that.
But give it four years and we won't have a public education system in this country at all anyway, so all this does is vindicate my decision to not have children.
Okay, but that isn't what you said prior — that's shifting the goalpoasts. You specifically said
Imo, this is something that can be taught in a basic foods/cooking class, or a home economics class (which has at least been taught in the past ^[1]^ — I haven't found any current data).
References
I disagree. Imo, there isn't any point to teaching driving skills to students. Imo, I also don't believe that it would be entirely ethical.
How many hours of the average American's life will be spent behind the wheel of a car?
How many hours of the average American's life will be spent examining 400 year old stage plays?
If they get something wrong behind the wheel of a car, what's the worst that can happen?
If they get something wrong examining a 400 year old stage play, what's the worst that can happen?
I propose that teaching Shakespeare instead of more in depth driver's ed isn't entirely ethical.
Would it be a goal of yours to reduce the amount of time that one spends driving in their life? If so, do you think that teaching drivers ed in school will achieve that end?
Reducing but not eliminating the amount of time people drive would mean less practical experience which means rusty drivers. I recommend recurring training.
For clarity, do you mean, for example, being required to re-pass a drivers test to renew one's license?
I think you misunderstood me. To be completely fair, I was rather vague. I wasn't arguing that one was more ethical than the other. My argument about ethics was from the perspective of further subsidizing something that already receives enormous subsidies — ie driving and cars (this is conjecture at the moment, but I can go into more detail if you'd like).
Out of curiosity, do you live in an area that doesn't require a driver's license in order to be legally allowed to drive on a public road?
No, I do live in an area where drivers' ed is pathetically short and simple though.
Instead of adding it to a mandatory school curriculum, would you be satisfied with a more strict licensing process?