Andrew Dickens: Our kids should know Shakespeare

The draft year 7-13 English curriculum proposes compulsory Shakespeare for senior secondary school students.  That’s provoked a furious debate about the relevance of Shakespeare in this day and age - Shakespeare is important, but is it essential? Even when I was at secondary school 45 years ago, Shakespeare was not popular.  One year we were studying Hamlet. So, the school organised an afternoon matinee of the play at the Mercury Theatre. The boys were so rowdy that a young Michael Hurst commented it was the worst audience he had ever had.  We didn’t even calm down during the sword fights.  That didn’t happen when we studied Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Thomas Beckett’s Murder in the Cathedral.   Those plays used language we understood and themes we could relate to.  To teach you must engage and much and all as we bemoan the fall of Shakespeare, he’s still so strong that his influence on the modern world will not fail.   So, what will engage the kids, I don’t know. This generation is less engaged than ever - so much so I had to explain who Bob Geldof was to my 26-year-old son. And speaking of which the most engagement I had in English at school was when we studied the lyrics of David Bowie’s 'Time' from the Aladdin Sane album.  And let’s remember that in 2016 Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize in literature. Would anyone mind if he was added to the curriculum? Post script:   I see that the new curriculum says that spelling and keyboard lessons for children at intermediate schools should be compulsory - you mean they’re not already? How do our kids survive in this modern world?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.