Shakespeare in Schools

[bookbard]

Do your public schools teach Shakespeare? It occurred to me the other day that there are entire theatre companies in Australia who are able to run simply because schools are required to teach Shakespeare and so the companies have a captive audience of school students every year. They don't even need to ponder which plays to run, just look at the curriculum.

Is that the case in your country?

[Rosie_0801]

Somehow dd has managed to avoid all but a short passage from Romeo and Juliet. The virtues of a blue collar school, I guess. She says she'd have done an *entire* play or two if she'd stayed at the girl's school in Melbourne. 

[City Mouse]

I don’t know if the schools in the US are required to teach Shakespeare as every state is a bit different, but I remember my DS reading Romeo and Juliet. I think I remember him reading at least one or two others, but I could be mixing up memories. 

[madteaparty]

Private schools here usually do one Shakespeare play a year starting in 6th grade. My DD is entering 8th grade in a supposedly good public and has so far managed to escape any encounter with Shakespeare or indeed any other real books above 200 pages in public school. (We cover some at home). 

[Katy]

IME the better the school district, the more Shakespeare. 

[catz]

Yes, and we have a couple local theater companies that do Shakespeare regularly and have targeted weekday matinees for those audiences.  I did multiple Shakespeare plays in public high school in the midwest back in the day.  

[bookbard]

28 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Somehow dd has managed to avoid all but a short passage from Romeo and Juliet. The virtues of a blue collar school, I guess. She says she'd have done an *entire* play or two if she'd stayed at the girl's school in Melbourne. 

Must be state dependent - in NSW you have to study a Shakespeare between 7-10. I'm not sure if Shakespeare's compulsory for advanced English (11-12), but a play is, so probably a lot do it. 

[prairiewindmomma]

Yep. There’s exposure most years from 7th grade on.

[bookbard]

When I went to school, we had to do a Shakespeare every year (from year 7), and we also did the sonnets. But since then the curriculum has changed a lot. At one point, you had to teach a Shakespeare in year 7/8 and another in year 9/10, and then one for year 11/12. Now I think it's only one between 7-10. The other author that you had to do was Jane Austen - we did Persuasion. 

[Rosie_0801]

11 minutes ago, bookbard said:

Must be state dependent - in NSW you have to study a Shakespeare between 7-10. I'm not sure if Shakespeare's compulsory for advanced English (11-12), but a play is, so probably a lot do it. 

There must be wiggle room, because both schools dd attended were in Vic. She's not doing VCE English, though, because she's in the trades stream.

Back in the day, I, even at a former tech school, did R&J and Macbeth. 

[ScoutTN]

Minimally.

[Clemsondana]

When I was in school I think we did 2 over the 4 years of high school.  In 10-12 the lit was tied to history, so there was only 1 time period when it would have been appropriate.  Our local public is on a block schedule so that, like college, a class is 1 semester long.  My kid said that the kids only read 4 books in freshman English, so if they did any Shakespeare in high school it was likely not more than 1 work. One of our co-op English teachers does 8ish books/year (sometimes instead of a long work they may do a collection of short stories).  They do Shakespeare every year and it is often a favorite.  The kids are assigned parts and spend a few weeks working through the play out loud, like a 'reader's theater'.  This year's seniors truly loved it every year - enough that it's a spring unit, where those of us who can choose the sequence (unlike history and math) put our fun stuff because we are tired and so are the kids.  They are just meant to read it with some inflection, but I remember there being toy swords brought in to enhance the experience, and the kids organizing themselves into a group for the chorus so that it wasn't read by just 1 person.  This class meets in the chapel of our facility, so they have a slightly elevated stage that the kids stand on to 'perform'.  

[wathe]

Shakespeare is not an official requirement as per government curriculum documents, but most public boards do include it in their high-school english programs.   The offerings at my kid's school are Midsummer Night's Dream in grade 9, Romeo and Juliet in grade 10, MacBeth in Grade 11 and Hamlet in Grade 12 -- which hasn't changed since I went through high-school, in a different city, in the late 80's.

Grade 11 English in my local board is supposed to be an indigenous literature course.  Not sure how MacBeth reconciles with that theme (it really doesn't!).  DS1 will be taking this course starting in September, so I we shall see.

[wintermom]

19 hours ago, bookbard said:

Do your public schools teach Shakespeare? It occurred to me the other day that there are entire theatre companies in Australia who are able to run simply because schools are required to teach Shakespeare and so the companies have a captive audience of school students every year. They don't even need to ponder which plays to run, just look at the curriculum.

Is that the case in your country?

Yes, we do in Canada (at least the English school system. The French likely does other literature in French). I'd love it if the schools would actually take their students to a Shakespeare play to truly understand the language, context, story, characters, etc., but sadly they don't. For homeschooling, I ensured that my dc saw a video of MacBeth and we went to a live Shakespeare theatre production performed by local youth (some homeschoolers, too). They especially remember doing that. 

[Laura Corin]

Required in England.  Syllabuses for 14-16yo have full Shakespeare plays and also 16-18 for those who continue with Eng.Lit.

Attached exam paper is for 16yo - scroll down for questions.  Answers are typically essay style 

1et0-01-que-20220526.pdf

Edited July 13 by Laura Corin

[happypamama]

I did a quick google for my state's standards. I could be missing something, but I did see that Shakespeare is listed as a possible example to study under the humanities/arts standard, and I see a standard for English Language Arts that says students should study at least one Shakespeare play (and one play by an American dramatist) in 112th-12th grade. 

 

30 years ago, I seem to recall that we read Hamlet in sixth grade and Romeo and Juliet at some point in middle or early high school. We also read Macbeth, I believe in tenth grade when we studied British literature in an honors class, but possibly in another class too; I feel like I remember being annoyed at studying it a second time. I know we read King Lear in 12th grade, but that was a dual enrollment college drama course (but taught specifically for high school students), so maybe not the norm. I also recall watching a scene from Henry V in that same class, and I feel like we did read the whole thing as well, but it's been a minute.