My 13 year old son came home and told me that Shakespeare is BORING

[nearlymybeetrootday]

Because the school had sat the class in front of a film of the Merchant of Venice without any discussion or explanations.

I emailed the head of English who said 'there is only so much we can expect a supply teacher to do'

That will be err ...nothing then? Apart form bore the pants off my son and his mates for two lessons.

I am livid - surely the supply teacher could've done something - even if it was nothing to do with Shakespeare? ds1 learnt nothing - had no idea of the story -

and this is a child who sees Shakespeare regularly.

I work my socks off promoting Shakespeare in schools and my ds school fucks it up/

RANT OVER

I agree it is harder to read and love to watch. Itake it - custy - you have seen KB in Much Ado About Nothing, loved him in that.

I often read it aloud to myself to help with the drama etc.

I agree it is harder to read and love to watch. Itake it - custy - you have seen KB in Much Ado About Nothing, loved him in that.

I often read it aloud to myself to help with the drama etc.

Head of English is going to call to discuss - wise words needed!!!

hannah - that sounds fantastic - rare though!!!

I never encountered Shakepeare until Access- we did Othello, I loved every moment. The Ds's are already gettinga grounding though, as they have watched those of the Shakespeare Rewritten episodes that i cnsider suitable for them several times already, and theya re actually quite excited about the prospect of reading in the future. I wanted tor edress the balance really, mys chool considered it too boring for kids to do and I think I missed out.

I especially want this for Sam, as his spoken language is amazing- at 7 he ahs the spoken age of a 10-11 year old according to his SALT. This amtters, as he has learning disabilities in other areas, so if language will be his gift (probably is mine) then I want him to explore the richness of that.

Does that sounds overly worthy? LOL

(DH teases me by calling me MC Mummy- middle class Mummy- in full recognition of the lack of reading / shakespeare prevalent on the concil estate where I was raised. he credits MN with this and finds it hilarious)

We had a letter home from school to say that Year 5 are doing Romeo and Juliet this term and they want to show them a DVD of it (the 1968 Zeffirelli version). The letter made me PMSL - "we have viewed the film and located no major instances of violence (some swordplay - not graphic) and no instances of swearing but we have identified 30 seconds of male/female nudity which we would describe as mild. You may withdraw your child from viewing the DVD on these grounds if you wish."

I filled out the 'withdraw permission' form and wrote "I am happy for ds1 to see the film but please can Mrs X or Mr Y cover his eyes when the rude bit is on?" and handed it to ds1 saying "is this OK?"

It was so funny - he was going "Muuuum! Nooooo! You can't say that!" I did eventually confess I was winding him up.

That's nothing to do with anything really - I'd be peed off too, beety - I love Shakespeare, and I'll be interested to see what ds1's response to it is.

Custy- the techer that taught us Othello would have agreed. Necessarily we had tor ead it, but she would have us take portions of whatever play we were covering (we did Look Back In Anger as well) and re-enact segments ourselves, we did the confrontation scene in LBIA as Trisha- fabulous . Except that my friend and I went 100% with it (I was Jimmy, bizarrely, he- my mate- was Alison as he couldn't be menacing enough LOL) and the other group just read from the book in monotone. Thank goodness we had (seriosuly) rejected the operatic version at the last moment!!!! PMSL at the memory but it got a group of under achieving adults into literature- one beat 8000 other applicants to a place at a good uni doing Lit)

Marthamoo- pmsl!

YOu see - good teaching of Shakespeare is very important!!

I love watching shakespeares plays but have seen some awful variations of them.
When I was at Sixth form the college used to occaisionally have theatre groups perform in the evening for th epublic (northern Broadsides came quite a lot) and students would get heavily discounted tickets so I watched quite a few that way.

Last year watched an outdoor performance and just before it started Romeo was taken ill and his substitude carried a book for the second half as he didn't know all the lines.

I'd say that the problem with teenagers having to do Shakespeare in schools isn't the TEACHING of it but the horrible testing of it. I've taught Shakespeare many times, to a wide variety of pupils from utterly disaffected Yr 9s, through SEN pupils, first stage EAL learners, to A* level GCSE. They've ll loved the plays but the problem (especially in KS3 testing)is that they then have to answer exam questions which force them to analyse the language.

I find this soooo frustrating. Even as a voracious adult reader, I don't read books to analyse their language, but to "befriend" the characters and get caught up in the story of their lives. Until they change the examination system, Shakespeare WILL seem a chore to teenagers.

janeite - this is year 8 s there is no testing - yet- thank god!

I was put off Shakespeare by the teaching, not the testing. I was being told what to think, which never went down well. As an earlier poster put it, Shakespeare was a dramatist, not an essayist. So much so that there isn't much if any "orginal" Shakespeare at all, because the "product" of his labours was a live show, not a book. What we have are what later generations put together and edited, sometimes quite badly.

Also, whatever the merits of Shakespeare, the question must be asked at what point we give it up for GCSE.
English is a rapdidly evolving language, and it gorws ever harder to reach the point where an average kid can understand it at all.
Also the cultural context with it's classical allusions requires an immense amount of work before it sounds any different from "is this beauty as fine as Commander Troi as she gazed upon the dying Borg, swpet up in the Warp neutron flux ?"

If you are not a Trek fan than the above makes no sense to you, but that is the position that more than 99% of 13 yos are at when presented with links to Greek classics.

And to what end would you teach it ?