Should Shakespeare be mandatory? The perspective of a student

A student from Secondary School discusses the proposal that Shakespeare becomes mandatory for 12 and 13 students.

The new draft for New Zealand’s English The curriculum proposed mandatory shakespeare for every 12 and 13 students. He also suggested texts, including World War I poets, Winston Churchill World War II speeches, and at least one nineteenth -century text for senior students. English teachers said they do not know why the new curriculum does not refer to Te Mātaiaho, the structure supporting most of the curriculum update in other subjects.

As a year 12 that left a family gathering early to go to a rehearsal for the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare festival last weekend, you might think I would be a great advocate of this new resume. I love playing Shakespeare. One of my favorite plays I saw was Hamlet by the University of Canterbury’s Drama Society and Cito Macbeth on a semi-regular base.

Despite all this, I don’t think making Shakespeare mandatory is a good choice. Shakespeare’s language is complex and archaic sometimes, and has never been made to be read as a book. Most people of my age find inaccessible and boring, and make it mandatory will make it less pleasant to the English nerds that will be surrounded by people who don’t care less. I make the most of English when everyone in the class is absorbed by the material and, unfortunately, it does not always happen when the material is Shakespeare.

On the other hand, seeing Hamlet Live was something I really liked, and if I had not studied Macbeth in class first, I would have struggled to understand the language. Make the theater more accessible, deepening the public’s understanding of the text. Extended metaphors, similes and yambic pentameter are all much more pleasant when they are brought to life. Observing this performance, I was able to see many of the ways in which modern theater and cinema were based on Shakespeare. It would be a shame to lose this cultural point of reference that impacted both pop culture and drama.

However. Shakespeare is a white man 400 years ago. Does it really represent the teenagers of New Zealand today? Do we see each other in your stories? In English this week, I wrote about the themes of activism and colonization in the work of Maori women and I really enjoyed studying Tayi Tibble and Coco Solid. Without this task, I would not know where to start the contemporary writers of New Zealand, but both poūkahangatus and How to loot in a territory war They were colorful and full of life, using slangs that are still around and describing places I can imagine. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a knight in King Richard’s castle or how Brutus felt while sitting in the Senate.

And yet. Many of my favorite books are in places I have never been, especially in New York or random British cities: that doesn’t make them less good. I relate to the characters because of the way they are written and the emotions they have, a good story is a good story, regardless of the scenery. I definitely think we all should read books written by people exactly like us about places we have lived for years. One of the best ways to understand new people and places is to read books.

Being included in a resume is automatically saying that these are the important voices and deserve to take up space. I never learned something at school that was a Turkish author from Sri Lanka or Egyptian and wouldn’t know where to start if I wanted to look for something alone. There are so much culture and experiences that they are not being heard because the perspectives of white men are repeatedly repeated.

Even yet. Shakespeare and his contemporaries also had a huge impact on the English language as a whole, and in some ways I understand the appeal of uniformity in their teachings throughout the ATAEROA. Phrases like “Wild Goose Chase” and “Heart of Gold” are only in circulation because of the immense impact that Shakespeare’s pieces had in the English canon, and this is partly due to the widespread study of such texts in schools.

Shakespeare has shaped theater and English and has an important place in history, but I think it’s time to make room for younger and younger writers, more relevant to today’s world. I won’t take the hamlet quotes out of my wall anytime soon and I will keep walking straight to the classic section on all second-hand-but bookstores that doesn’t mean I have to inflict my colleagues with long and boring classes that study texts totally distant for them.

If curriculum shapers insist on including Shakespeare, they need to ensure that there are many younger writers, women and New Zealandes in high school English classes.