Bite-Sized Bard
Saturday, May 10th by scott malia
No consensus has been reached within the educational community regarding the best way to teach Shakespeare. Some of the issues that surround this topic are language, period, and content. Most recently, the debate has shifted focus to age (i.e. when can you start to expose children to Shakespeare?). There seem to be two key strands of discussion that tend to overlap. First, the concern for educators is how best to do justice to the texts, their history, and the author himself. The second, related element is how to teach the material to students in a way that generates and perpetuates interest.
A recent article brought up an issue that puts these two potentially harmonious desires in direct conflict with each other. The item centered on the idea of teaching students segments of Shakespeare’s plays rather than looking at the works as a whole. Teachers might use highly edited versions of the plays or simply work on key scenes with famous lines or dialogue that highlights the uniqueness of The Bard’s writing style.
Those opposed to this approach cite the negative influence of standardized tests and overly rigid curriculum in “dumbing down’ the plays. In the battle of accessibility versus credibility, no one seems to win. Some educators compromise by teaching smaller or simplified versions to younger students and then graduating them to the full length originals when they get older. What seems to be troubling is where to draw the line and who gets to make that call. There are some middle schoolers fully capable of reading Shakespeare and others who cannot. In order to have any hope of resolution, educators must find a compromise that does not privilege smart kids at the expense of average or below-average ones (or vice versa).
