I disliked Shakespeare in general but I really loathed Chaucer. I prefer the likes of Melville, Milton, and Hawthorne.
My own pet peeve...plays were meant to be acted out, not read. A few skilled actors can turn “boring” Shakespeare into “great” Shakespeare.
My son was reciting Shakespeare the other day for a class presentation.
I told him to use it to woo the babes. I think that it was the first time he had heard the term woo. But he got my point.
My wife looked at me as if I had worms crawling out of my ears. She still thinks of my son as a little baby.
Great Art ended when the Renaissance ended. Everything else since then is mostly crap.
The reason kids groan is due to poor teachers, who do not know how to make literature exciting and interesting - Chaucer being a case in point.
Teach them how to draw the human form correctly, teach them how to write in Old and Middle English. Bring back Latin and Greek so they can read the originals by Aristotle and Julius Caesar. Hell, just teach them English, spelling, cursive writing, and grammar (as well as a good grounding in history, basic science, and basic math - without a calculator!).
Good teachers can make even the most putatively dull or boring subject matter interesting and exciting, making the kids want to learn.
Knowledge is power, ignorance merely makes a good socialist voter.
i think all kids should be required to read harry potter and when they’re in junior high, 50 shades of gray...doesn’t everyone? /sarcasm
what they should be reading is ayn rand
Both. But make it clear that some are classics in the truest sense, while the others have potential but have not lived long enough to have established their bona fides.
Nearly all of my own appreciation of great pieces of literature came from "circling back", that is, considering the work after I'd built up a context and understood the language and the issues being addressed from my own life experience. Shakespeare was like that - "how sharper than a serpent's tooth / to have a thankless child" meant nothing to me at 12. Like a joke, it loses its punch if you have to have the references explained.
About the best thing you can do for an individual student is treat him or her as an individual, each at a different stage of understanding. That doesn't translate well to assembly-line classrooms. It does translate well to a tutor/pupil relationship, which is why the Brits enjoyed such success with that model. It isn't very economical, to be sure, but it's cheaper than failure.
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The best thing about Shakespeare is the universal themes. Change the costumes, location, and date and Romeo and Juliet becomes West Side Story. The Tempest becomes Forbidden planet. And if you really want a stretch Henry V becomes Seven Samurai, which becomes The Magnificent Seven.
Why does reading have to be miserable? What teen girl wants to read Silas Marner? If you don’t have something to get kids engaged, what good does it do other than give kids a distaste for reading?
My son is a freshman in high school IB program and he is currently reading The Odyssey and they are reading Romeo & Juliet next.
Guess there’s really no point in studying the history and evolution of English in an English class.
If they want “the same themes”, why don’t they just read comic books.
My 8th grader is reading Romeo & Juliet. 5th grader reading Where the Red Fern Grows.
Mostly classics, and here’s why, “classical, Christian education teaches children to think clearly and to love beauty and the past. Countless books by Christian educators are flooding publishers and websites because classical, Christian education nurtures children into life-long learners.”
I say mostly, because there are some moderns that are very influential and also need to be read, such as G.K. Chesterton, or C.S. Lewis, or William Bradford, or, John Bunyan.
Except that they don't.
I will always remember the time my friend's son was moaning about the fact that he had to read some stupid thing called "Beowulf". I asked him what he thought of the monster attacking and eating the warriors. Were the sneak attacks a sign of the monster's evil or of it's cunning?
Monster? People get eaten? Cool!
You have to know how to get kids interested in stuff.
Maybe you could substitute "Life of Pi" for "Robinson Crusoe", maybe. But for Macbeth? Not even in the same category.