Shakespeare suffers slings and arrows of Sats fortune

Anthea Lipsett

The Guardian, Wednesday November 26 2008

William Shakespeare is losing favour in schools, with half of teachers cancelling courses with the Royal Shakespeare Company since Sats for 14-year-olds in English and maths were scrapped.

The RSC said up to 50% of teachers have dropped out of the training courses it runs to aid the teaching of Shakespeare to teenagers since ministers abolished the national curriculum tests, which included a section on the playwright, last month.

Jacqui O'Hanlon, the RSC's director of education, said: "School managers will not release teachers for a day's training because Shakespeare is no longer seen as a priority. If that's the message being given to teachers and the message pervading schools, what impact is that going to have on the wider entitlement young people have to engage with Shakespeare?"

The worst-case scenario would see students exposed to just one play - probably Romeo and Juliet - during their whole secondary career, she warned. In a memo to the Commons schools committee, the RSC said 40 to 50% of teachers booked on their training courses had cancelled.

Barry Sheerman MP, the committee chairman who raised the issue at a hearing this week, said: "It's quite chilling if schools don't want students to go and see Shakespeare if it's not examined." Government edicts on the curriculum were reminiscent of "Soviet Russia" and teachers were "too frightened" to complain in case they weren't promoted, he said.

"Most teachers are terrified to go to bed at night without reading the latest missive. The government controls the curriculum even if it's by manipulation, not direction."

The schools minister, Jim Knight, promised to look into the shunning of Shakespeare. "If something is part of a statutory test it focuses minds and drives behaviour," he told the committee on Monday. "I'm disappointed schools have taken this line and we need to do more research to find out why." Knight insisted that schools had flexibility over the curriculum they taught.

But he said a generation of teachers were not used to having the extra flexibility introduced into the secondary curriculum this year and needed to learn from older teachers. He said the government was unashamed about the priority it has placed on English and maths.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said schools felt under more pressure since key stage three tests were scrapped. "The government expected to release pressure on schools but we are hearing from teachers that it is just as much or intensifying."

Guardian article

So what if Shakespeare isn't taught. Teach kids to read, and what a library is. Have The smart kids will then eventually read Shakespeare and attend performances of his plays. The stupid ones will not, but will be spared the annoyance of having his work forced on them.

--Bob G.

KC, What were the questions that had been asked about WS? I can see post-modern educators looking for new parameters in testing that could lead them away from the usual cant with which orthodox scholarship is infused. When space in testing is at a premium, a fresh approach to a curriculum including the Plays could work. Roll up the blinds and turn off the magic lantern. Questions can be designed to deal with language, syntax, plot, history, and politics, etc. all of a piece. Educators must needs discover where they have been keeping their heads, re-emerge, and re-enter the world of education. Respy, Joe

Joe, I think you're asking for too much too soon. Best, it seems to me, that kids be taught pretty much as I was: to follow the basic story of each play. Have the best bits of poetry emphasized. Leave the rest for those hooked to get on their own, or from later, more advanced courses.

Also, because of the huge advantage contemporary kids have over me, show them videos of the plays. Horrible as it may seem to purists, I'd recommend a video of selections from the plays emphasizing the comedic scenes, romance for the girls, and the war scenes and speeches. Yes, going for the lowest common denominator, but working upward.

--Bob G.

I don't think it's horrible at all, nor that it goes for the lowest common denominator. In the drama secion of my sophomore literary genre classes I showed videos of not only Shakespeare, but other playwrights, beginning with an old black-and-white version of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex. In the Shakespeare, I showed Ian McKellen's R3, Branagh's H5 and Much Ado, and Zeffirelli's R&J. Although they're not live stage productions, which is what I would have preferred, those versions are works of art in themselves. I would have them read the play the week before I showed the video so they had the gist of the story and the language. Not one student complained about the language or that they couldn't understand the story. I had lots of students say that they finally understood a little of what Shakespeare was all about.

TR

Thanks Pistol, I did not want to even try to dissect Bob's under-valuation of students today - or even when he was a tad - or worse - myself. I remember in junior high school doing a book report on "The Count of Monte Christo". Somehow, using the copy in my parents small library, all in red leather and gold type, I violated the educational process. School libraries had sanitized versions, whose omissions were a challenge to understanding the plot and its necessary emissions. But the teacher let me explain things - about Milady and what she did in her spare time - and with whom. She was probably ahead of her time - but not mine. Joe

"Leave the rest for those hooked to get on their own," I said, Joe.

--Bob G.

Have had a second look at KC's post. Fourteen year olds, teachers, and RSC! How could anyone with the slightests exposure to the authorship material trust RSC to do anything right? Just by denying the authorship question any course with teachers has to be built on a lie. Perhaps it is time to cancel all of the Old Ways for any age or class level; go out, and after giving the subject a good airing, try again. I am not sure whether Bob has been able to find the orthodox solution to all of this, but if there was anything like teaching creationism at work today, it would be the mindless position taken by RSC as well as the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The latter funded Michael Wood's book and TV show. Did Greenblatt's money come from the same sources (or via some shielded route)? We still have recorded college level courses processed by profs such as Harold Bloom or Dartmouth's Saccio made availible in technicolor via snail mail. How soon by e-mail? No one is really safe from the educational establishment. In addition to our Hall of Fame we should publish a list of schools and colleges that have faculties capable of doing what U Mass did for Bassanio in spite of itself. This could lead to development of appropriate curricula at different levels based on the experience of educators that have broken through the chain-link walls of the Myth. Joe

The idea that Shakespeare is not interesting is at work here, and who can blame students thus educated for thinking so?

KC

Precious; If the kids knew who Venus was and who Adonis was and why and who those sweet seventeen sonnets were to and why and why it became necessary to introduce the idea of a a summer's day - they might get interested. But that would mean that the afdults would have to admit to their children that they (the adults) knew all about sex. Joe

Or even that that possibilty is there, Joe.

KC