Helen Mirren says Shakespeare should not be taught in school

[kobewife1]

Helen Mirren: ‘I don’t think #Shakespeare should be taught in schools’: https://t.co/Ks73tQdMcw
- Paul Budra (@PaulBudra) November 25, 2020
Oscar Winner Helen Mirren said via a Zoom conversation with Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Gregory Doran that Shakespeare should not be taught in school since "drowning through" the plays in class

Comments

[poor_medea]

I'm a university lecturer in English, and I absolutely agree. The WAY Shakespeare is taught in schools (particularly the UK) just makes students hate it, and I then have to spend years clawing them back from that. They spend a year on one text, analysing every single word, and yet they still fail to understand what the play actually means. Similarly, I don't think they should read Austen or much of Dickens at school.

[xellabelle]

I completely agree. The way English Lit was taught in my school made me not like English as a subject. Even though I got an A* I didn’t really understand any of the lines in Romeo and Juliet, we were just told that’s what it meant and what it implies and I just wrote it in my exam. I don’t what the solution is but I think 15 is just too young to understand Shakespeare fully in the way that it’s currently taught at school, it was only after university that I went back to Romeo and Juliet and discovered my love for it after actually comprehending what the text meant.

[therearewords]

You're speaking my language.

[chrisdesu]

Does that mean it actually shouldn't be taught? Maybe it means it just needs to be taught better?

[puro_desmadre]

Cause it's boring. She's right.

[funhouse]

I loved A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear

But I loved Waiting for Godot a lot more

[kobewife1]

I've had good and bad experiences studying Shakespeare. In high school, it was Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. The two teachers I had made reading and understanding the language easier. But in college I had to read Hamlet (or Macbeth) and had the opposite reaction to it because I didn't understand it and the teacher wasn't good at explaining it.

Maybe it's taught better in high school since college you are on your own or because those two plays are easiest to understand. Though maybe if I took that class more serious in college maybe I could've had the sense to see a tutor since that whole English course dealt with that one play.

[toxic_illusion]

In my AP English Lit class, we read Hamlet and the watched what we just read in the Kenneth Branagh version. It was great. It contextualized a lot and now I legit love Hamlet.

We also read Emma and then watched Clueless and I still love Clueless and hate Emma.

[sonorous_spirit]

i have a degree in english lit and i would concur.

i did two years of shakespeare modules and christ almighty the professor was so precious about it. like, you could tell he CLEARLY favoured the kids who'd studied the lesser studied plays at private school or whatever. (like, i'm sorry my high school experience was mostly macbeth and romeo and juliet, i went to an underfunded state school, not somewhere that could afford a yearly trip to the globe to see as you like it and troilus and cressida)

kids need to SEE shakespeare, reading it can be very tedious and it really isn't for everyone.

[cityofships]

Fellow English lit degree haver here lol. We got drilled with The merchant of Venice and romeo and Julie in second and third year respectively and it made me hate Shakespeare so much that I didn't bother reading macbeth for fourth year (blagged the essay and got through it). The first Shakespeare play i liked was as you like it in lower sixth and by then I'd had enough of him. I avoided all his modules at uni.