>

I bite my thumb at OP
The op doth protest too much, methinks. >

I bite my thumb at OP >

No, sir. I do not bite my thumb at OP, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. >

Do you quarrel sir? >

Quarrel, sir? No, sir! >

We can't stop here! This is bat country! >

We were somewhere around Verona, on the edge of Veneto, when the Capulets began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded, maybe you should quarrel”… >

And finally there I stood face to face with the elusive Shakespeare Hunter. >

No, it's Hunter S Thompson, the S is for Shakespeare. >

I keep your head low
Shakespeare may just sick his imaginary attorney on you >

You aren't entirely wrong, and you aren't entirely right.
Shakespeare isn't outdated. He's a lot of things, but outdated isn't one of them. Some of the stories that his plays centre around fit quite perfectly with both modern issues, and modern politics. Julius Caesar and Coriolanus can be used to talk about populist politics, for one example, and the metaphors work incredibly well.
Remaking Shakespeare is very important, and very useful, because it can transform an old tradition into a reflection of our modern culture.
HOWEVER...
The way that we have taught Shakespeare for years is one that completely disengages kids from him. Yes, the language is frustrating. He has lots of endless soliloquies, and our obsession over rhyming scheme and iambic pentameter basically puts students to sleep. 
We should not spend as much time on Shakespeare as we do, and when we do focus on him, Shakespeare should be remembered as an active participation subject. Fuck Romeo and Juliet, focus on something else. The Roman plays, The Tempest, all of those have some very weird and engaging lore that surround them that is worth picking up.
Shakespeare can be rude, funny, offensive, and wild. Speeches like the 'Brutus is an honourable man' speech from Julius Caesar or characters like Caliban are really, really interesting.
All that being said...
Do not teach Shakespeare in history, for God's sakes. You'll end up teaching that Shakespeare kept a strong historical account.
He didn't. >

This is hard to write without it sounding incredibly boastful, but England does have a very strong theatrical tradition. You're never far away from a local amateur dramatics society, Thespian society or theatre company. Shakespeare is pretty much their bread and butter, and I think that given the nature of Shakespeare's plays- if you can play those roles convincingly, you are most definitely a skilled actor. 
This is why I think English actors are overrepresented in Hollywood. Case in point is Patrick Stewart, who spent decades on the Shakespeare circuit, then got the role of Captain Picard in Star Trek are figuratively blew everyone out of the water with the quality of his performance. >


You're never far away from a local amateur dramatics society, 

Ah, you've met my family >

I will grant you that most curricula do a bad job of teaching Shakespeare, and I’m inclined to agree that Romeo and Juliet is a terrible starting point, and the comedies are even worse. It takes time to make sense of the language, and comedy is so language-dependent. Having to read footnotes that spell out the jokes does not make them funny. 
My vote for the best intro to Shakespeare is Macbeth. Ambition and greed and murder and tyrants? If you watched Game of Thrones, you can probably get behind Macbeth. >


If you watched Game of Thrones, you can probably get behind Macbeth.

If Game of Thrones were taught in English classes, it would suck. Reading the script, as is done with Shakespeare, would ruin an otherwise entertaining series.
Reading the script to anything is not as fun as watching it. >

You do know it's a book adaptation...? >

Part of the problem is that Shakespeare is meant to be watched, not read.  Reading Shakespeare is boring.  WATCHING Shakespeare, with actors who know their roles inside and out, is breathtaking. >


Reading Shakespeare is boring.

Reading Shakespeare yourself can be boring. Listening to your 14 year old classmates, some of whom could probably barely manage The Gruffalo, attempt to read out A Midsummer Night's Dream is EXCRUCIATING >

You say excruciating, I say hilarious. >

If you're not in the AP English class, and are just stuck in the regular dumb kid English class like I was (because i was too busy playing runescape to do homework so my grades sucked, not because I couldn't read lol), it stops being funny real quick. 
Some of those kids hadn't read a book their entire lives; it was the early era of sparknotes so they really didn't have to I guess. They were basically at the same reading level as they were in kindergarten. Kids these days are glued to social media sure but at least they're reading things on them, right? They're probably reading more, even if it is just Twitter or Instagram posts or whatever, then the kids in my day. Which is kinda funny I think. >

Yeah, I was in the same sort of boat. I read books like I was drinking water, but I also got a taste of video games, and my grades went into the toilet. So I was in Dumb Kid English with dudes that could barely read the name of the school, never mind a damn sonnet or paragraph. >

My best friend and I got banned from reading aloud for more than one paragraph a day, bc one day we got sick of the dumb kids taking ten times longer, so we tagged each other back and forth instead of tagging round the circle. We read for maybe 45 minutes straight, fast as we could, switching out every time a breath would cause a pause, no room for interruption.
A year later me and a different friend got in trouble at Little Caesars orientation, bc they made us group read the employee handbook, and we pulled the same system. I'm not gonna sit and wait for seven illiterates to read thirty pages of corporate drivel. >

I had a strange tangentially-related experience in 11th grade ... my US History teacher also ran the school's Evelyn Wood Speed Reading program (which I never took because I could read quickly just fine on my own). But in the middle of this year, we were also performing The Pirates of Penzance, and I got the role of Major-General Stanley, who famously has the "I am the very model of a modern major-general" patter song. 
I got very fast at those verses, because you sorta have to. She (the teacher) heard about this, and started having me read aloud in class more. Like, a lot more. As fast as I could. For several days, I did the reading for the entire class at warp speed. She was fascinated that I seemed to be able to process it and get it out my mouth faster than many kids could read to themselves. 
But then she was very disappointed when she learned that I also subvocalize (i.e., I "hear" the words inside my head) when I read. Apparently you can't do that if you really want to unlock speed reading. >

What's it called when your eyes are seeing the words but your brain is showing you a movie created based on those words? I don't really remember reading the words. I don't remember reading the words "red car" but I can go back and replay my personal movie in my head and tell you the car is/was red. >

I didn’t know there was a name for it beside “visual imagery”. I read like that as well and always assumed everyone else did until recently. My wife is perfectly literate, but doesn’t enjoy reading because it is just boring words to her. I read often because it creates that movie in my head that you mentioned. Like by the end of a book I’ll have facial features assigned for the primary characters. 
It’s cool while reading but it really makes movies based on novels hard to appreciate. >

I didn’t know this wasn’t like “standard” thinking. Neato. >

I agree with you in spirit, but not in detail.
Shakespeare is great and should absolutely continue to be a part of English classes. But the way that those lessons are taught is often crap and only makes kids disengage.
A similar thing happened to me in 6th grade with Edgar Allen Poe. By all rights, I should have loved Poe, but the way his works were taught in school caused me to dislike him for many years. This tells me that the problem has little to do with modernity or being outdated.
To take Romeo and Juliet for example. It is often framed as a love story, which does it a disservice because Shakespeare did not write it as one. The entire story is a dark joke. I feel like that detail alone would change a lot of readings/viewings. Context is as important as content. >

Its a tragedy. Not a comedy. As everyone dies. 
It is interesting though. Its absolutely not a romance >


everyone dies 

Fuck’s sake, did you not consider putting a spoiler tag on this? >

Seriously! It’s only been out for 400 some years! Need Spoiler tags! 🤣 >

I was just about to read it >

read the prologue to make sure its something you are interested in. >

Here's my poor person's gold 🥇 >

That dude "made" like legit manufactured a ton of modern english words. He would almost just smoosh them together to create word concoctions. The problem is that the modern curriculum isn't sufficiently explaining his importance in a linear way. I had to learn this years after reading it in HS. It's crazy. Google "what words did Shakespeare invent, and npr had an amazing podcast episode on it, I believe it was radiolabs "words". You won't regret it. >

You're right, but there's no way that would make highschool kids give a shit >

so? the majority high school kids don’t care about anything they’re learning. I taught high school science for 2 years and tried my hardest to make it interesting for everyone, but some kids would just rather eat soap than learn about its chemistry no matter how it’s presented. >

Definitely agree. After finishing university, I’d rather eat soap than have to experience organic and general chemistry again >

Dude O Chem was the BANE of my existence. We got through 3/4 of the quarter & the professor had to take an LOA due to losing his wife. The university said that certain majors could do a “pass/fail” option and “pass” the class as their grade stood at the moment, but I didn’t fall into that category, so I had to take it all over again. I fucking HATE O Chem to this day. 
Not the professors fault though- it was just a difficult subject to me & I really struggled with chemistry in general. >

Shakespeare could be good in a much later grade. 
Having to understand the old language AND the old customs AND analyse it for themes or whatever the teacher wants from the pupils is too much at once. >

As an English and theater nerd who loves Shakespeare, I think the biggest issue is the way we teach Shakespeare. We tend to just toss it at kids in early high school with no groundwork laid. For many kids its the first play they ever read. It's like teaching calculus before someone finished algebra. 
We should be teaching Shakespeare later, after some foundation in how you read a play, and spending enough time to actually teach it effectively. >

Shakespeare is so important to modern English that I think it's impossible not to focus on him in English class. Romeo and Juliette in my opinion is probably one of his worst plays and if I was a teacher I would never focus on it while Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet are available, the holy trinity of plays. >

I will stand by it until the day I die. R&J is a satire. Among the evidence is the fact that Romeo is gushing over this girl and then he sees Juliet. The first girl is never mentioned again. Just about every emotion in the play is absolutely fleeting. Imagine being willing to die over a 13 year old or 16 year old you have known for a couple days. >

I wish someone had pointed this out to me, when I had to study it aged 14.  As soon as I realised how they had only known each other for a couple of days, I dismissed the whole thing as bullshit. >


As soon as I realised how they had only known each other for a couple of days, I dismissed the whole thing as bullshit

That shit does sometimes happen though. They were a little faster than us but my wife and I decided to get married two weeks after we met each other, and then we got married two weeks after that. There were significantly fewer deaths in our case though. Zero actually, but yeah. >

All good marriages actually end in death tbh. >

Fair point, I should have said fewer deaths so far. >

Teach Shakespeare in the original linguistic context. His plays are full of wordplay and lewd puns that are destroyed by people reading it out of  accent and without the context of the words lost meanings. >

I like Shakesphere, because it's easy to calculate his volume if you know his radius. >

In my country they forced us to read only literature made from our country selected few authors. Every year from 1rst to 12th grade, ONLY THAT. Every year we glorify those authors and their works. How great they are and how lucky we are to be able to enjoy their masterpieces.... 
Writing essays every fucking week on what we think about the authors, and if your opinion differs from the norm you get an F mark and being scolded. 12 cursed years they were brainwashing us.....
After I graduated I absolutely hated reading any books... My brain constantly associated that with all the propaganda and so on from school. 
Only much much later I developed a reading habit / hobby. And it was like the floodgates opened. Books could actually be enjoyable reads believe it or not. I have been reading a full book every 1-2 days for more than a decade.
But I still cant even think of reading anything even remotely close to my country`s literature. I have been "Pavloved", not in the direction they wanted, but still.... >

I think they purposefully make kids read literature written for adults, so they won't ever touch a book ever again in their life. 
If this isn't t the reason, the whole system is really fucking stupid. >

uneducated and illiterated population is what every corrupted government (which is every major government in world) wants. their population being dumb and acts  as mass of sheeps unable to think for themselves and know for anything better other than what politicans says. 
there is reason why in 21st century we still didnt have rich/class war. 1% does helluva job bribing and keeping world in order from everyone on this planet living well. >

One of my favourite English classes was when we analysed ' Boulevard of broken dreams' as if it was a poem. 
I feel like English education often looks at the classics at the expense of applying the themes and analysis techniques to more modern literature >

English professor here. I agree with the notion of mixing in non-canonical or offbeat works into a curriculum, but there’s a place for the canon too. If you never read those classics, you’ll be missing a huge chunk of our shared history and discourse. Generally the university level is where you start to peel away from the canon (but even then, not right away). >

If I were an English teacher I would teach the classics by using contemporary interpretations. 
I studied English and as we got into the canon, a lot of episodes of shows I enjoyed made more sense. Off the top of my head, Hey Arnold did The Old Man and the Sea; American Dad did An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; South Park did The Lottery. 
It's one thing to say it's important to have the shared knowledge, but, personally, I would have engaged more earlier if I had been shown why with contemporary examples. >

Nah, Macbeth went hard in English class, watching the various plays and movies whilst also analysing the text wasn't that bad
Edit: id also like to add its possible a better teacher to make the class more exciting would've helped, some teachers passion can make it easier to sit through something you'd otherwise find extremely boring and actually enjoy it, at least imo that was the case as I switched classes a few times and had a more enjoyable time in my last English teachers class than my former >

What, you egg! >

[he stabs him] >

Mother I am dying >

I like Shakespeare and thought he was one of the more interesting things in my class. Sure as hell better than wuthering heights. >

I think the way it's done is boring. Shakespeare is interesting when done right but just reading his scripts like any other text is going to basically just be gatekeeping. 
Like someone else said, Shakespeare needs to be performed not read. I don't think a full production is practical or necessary, but something needs to be done. >

If Shakespheare is torture for native English speakers, imagine the pain for us non-native English speakers that had to go through Shakespheare in ENGLISH. >

I kind of agree. Shakespeare is meant to be listened to, and seen on a stage, not read. I do not enjoy reading his plays, but I really enjoy watching one of his plays done by a talented cast. The meaning of the words come through and it gets in to a rhythm. It is really really good in that context. 
The problem seems to be to me, that you are experiencing it in the wrong medium, the wrong format. >

I think you might have bad teachers. >

The way they are taught is so jarring too, they were never meant to be sat and read and Labour over every word. They are plays, they aenr even books. The reason it is taught so much is because it's considered "high-brow" and "intelligent" to read Shakespeare. I know no one in the real world, including some very avid readers including myself that have no interest in Shakespeare, they were never meant to be interesting to sit and read, they were to be watched and performed. >

What does “meant” even mean? We’re personal portraits now hanging in museums “meant” to be analyzed how they are?
No, but that’s how art criticism works. Shakespeare has incredible depth of language and you just aren’t going to get that just watching the play. It isn’t because it’s considered “high brow,” it’s because he’s a master of the English language.
Jesus people are confident in their ignorance >

Refer back to the post, do we teach overanalysis and the portraits equivalent of reading and rereading a script of a play designed for the stage to students? I'm not being ignorant I'm stating how Shakespeare is taken entirely out of its intended environment and stretched out to be taken in in the most uninteresting way, atleast portraits are still viewed in the correct instance, being looked at whilst hung on a wall. Schools are teaching Shakespeare in a completely incorrect way of showing it >

Its pretty weird to call the fundamental influence of English literature “outdated”. >

I can't be the only person who studied shakespeare in English class, which created a love of Shakespeare which lasts to this day right?
It must have something to do with the teaching style I'm sure. >

It's a lot about delivery. It needs to be performed more than read. And some people can teach by performing it (or better still, taking them to a performance) and others... well, they can't. 
A teacher who loves it will be able to share that joy more than someone who's "just teaching it". >

I remember in my grade 10 english class, we had a great teacher. We were doing Romeo & Juliet, and he got people to pair up and deliver a scene from the play, but you couldn't just read it word for word. You had to dissect the scene and re-write it in modern language, but still getting the same points across.
My buddy and I were assigned the scene where Tybalt is challenging Romeo to a duel and he's refusing to fight him. We went the extra mile and did it with sock puppets. Had a blast. >

Couldn't disagree more
Imo, there isn't a problem with introducing kids to Shakespeare at a young age - the issue is the specific plays we choose. 
Romeo and Juliet is the usual starting point for a lot of kids since the surface level of it is easy to understand - but even straightforward romance will go over their heads - and forget about any of the deeper themes of the play. The script has little levity and approaches romance with for more ernest intentions. It's a great play, but it and certain others should be saved for young adulthood when kids are grappling with similar problems.
Starting with Twelfth Night really worked for me as a kid. Simple comedies like it or Midsummer Night's Dream are perfect for kids. Even "action-heavy" plays like Macbeth or Julius Caesar won't hold kid's attention as just words on a page. All plays can be read and appreciated for what they are, no performance necessary - but it helps to be reading things you can truly comprehend on an emotional level. Fantastical stories allow kids to do that. >

There are enough modern retelling of his plays that you could focus on some of those instead of forcing the original down. I, too, hated reading his stuff. >

I have long wondered why this guy seems to be the only playwright going.  For centuries.  The marketing campaign must have been intense. >

The reason it’s boring is because you were being forced to learn it without any interest going into it. Virtually everything that is unwillingly thrusted upon you grows repulsive. 
The problem with our school system is deeper than WHAT is taught, but even HOW things are taught. >

TBH I agree with all OP's points but come to a different conclusion. Shakespeare is taught BADLY in schools, especially by high school ELA teachers who are trying to make reading Shakespeare interesting and it needs to be taught completely differently. 
Don't make kids read Shakespeare in class. Shakespeare's plays were never meant to be read, they were meant to be performed by trained actors who were used to the dialogue. We need to stop thinking of Shakespeare's plays as literature when they're theater and there's a subtle difference.
Also Romeo and Juliet doesn't resonate with kids as much as people think it will. Teachers need to stop thinking something has to have teenagers in it to be enjoyable to teens.
At my school, when we learned about the Renaissance, we had a local Shakespeare group come and do a one-hour version of Richard III for our 7th and 8th graders. The kids actually enjoyed it, even the ones who were groaning and complaining that they had to watch Shakespeare. There were only a few parts where they didn't understand what was being said, but- thanks to good acting- they were able to follow along even when they didn't understand the dialogue. The actors really encouraged the kids to yell at the characters and boo Richard or react to whatever was going on, and the kids got into it. I seem to remember a lot of, 'GIRL DO NOT TRUST HIM-' when Richard is trying to hit on Anne. >

Trash take, Shakespearean English has heavily contributed to the English vernacular, same as the King James Bible. These should prob be taught in English since they are so heavily referenced in every day speech.
History wise-we don’t know shit about billy shake stick. So not sure how that would work >

Tell me you're an idiot without telling me you're an idiot >

Reading Shakespeare is almost like reading in another language. Not quite as unintelligible as reading middle English for the first time, but it's impossible to enjoy something if you can't understand it and it's hard to understand Shakespeare without practise most of the time.. >

No he is basically  a founding father of that topic >

The failure lies with English teachers not being able to teach it well enough. Probably because they barely understand it themselves, or are unable to think critically about the themes. The same thing happens with bad teachers in math and science. “When are we ever going to use this?” Was heard so many times in math class, and few teachers were able to come up with any examples (because they don’t use math in their lives except to teach it, and most of them barely understand it well enough to repeat what’s in the textbook). Forget coming up with an answer like “okay [student], you like basketball? Let’s pretend you have a new basketball hoop at home. How can you paint the lines on the driveway and be sure that they’re exactly the same as the ones on the school court?”, and then explain how we can use length and the Pythagorean theorem to make sure we have a right angle, then you get into constructions and constraining mechanical drawings, etc. 
I would like to see an English teacher tie Shakespeare’s plays into modern teenage life, so kids have some kind of connection to it. But that would be actual work, and beyond the skills, ability and patience of most. >

If one, just ONE math teacher was able to provide a reason to me, it would have changed SO MUCH.
Instead of explaining Trig by setting up examples of ducks sitting at the top of light poles and calculating blah blah blah... they could have said hey when you're programming a video game, and you want a ball to fly at a certain angle, you can use Trig to break down the H and V components of the objects' speed.
Instead I sat bleary-eyed throughout it all, trying to figure out on some fundamental level, why I would ever need to know the angle of my sight line to this imaginary duck. Or why we're even talking about this.
Then when I became a professional game designer, everything I missed in math class because it was too difficult or made no sense... suddenly became something I could easily understand, teach myself, and apply in the real world.
I taught myself all about angles, velocity, elastic collisions, physics, projecting 3d coordinates onto a 2D plane.... you name it. Literally easy AF because I could see how it applied. >

Love this opinion. Surprisingly unpopular. You triggered a lot of nerds lol. >

I don’t entirely disagree with your stance but why do you find him to be outdated? >

“I hated it therefore everyone must hate it and we should get rid of it” >

A lot of kids hate it. Let's not pretend that's not a fact. >

A lot of kids hate brushing their teeth and not eating candy nonstop too. >

So, we make toothpaste taste like candy, and Shakespeare illegal so they'll sneak it into their locker and whisper about it behind closed doors.
Problem solved! >

Kid's toothpaste does taste like candy tho. >

Oh no… it’s too hard… we shouldn’t do it… >

99% of people in this thread don't know what sub they're in >

Im not American or English and I had never understood this obsession over Shakespeare… I remember asking a literature teacher back in high school (we don’t have Shakespeare so they don’t teach it), what was the fuss all about… she said Shakespeare invented everything. 
I don’t know if that’s true, I can’t read old English slang in a fluent way. >

100% agree, this is probably one of the main reason I hate reading. Trying to get back into it now because there are some awesome stories out there, Shakespeare isn’t one of them. >

If English language were a table with 4 legs, Shakespeare’s works would be worth at least 2 of them.
So many of the phrases, tv shows and movies borrow something that has been used by Shakespeare at least once. While an average person won’t get an epiphany and become a Master of Literature overnight after reading/studying him, it’s still the core inspiration of many dramas and movies we see today. I didn’t read all of Shakespeare, so I’m still surprised by how many modern TV shows and movies are influenced by him one way or other. >

He has an invaluable linguistic and historical value. Literary? Yes, on the same level of many others nowadays.
You could make the very same argument you just used for him for Cicero, Aesop, Ovid, Euripid, Virgil, etc.
I find it ludicrous to pin everything on this men as dramas didn’t exist before him and can only draw upon him for the future. He built heavily on those that came before him. Those that came after him built on his experience. That’s how humanity works. He is one of the greatest (and the list is long), not the one and only. >

Ehhhhhhhhhh
The basic problem is that the ways Shakespeare is particularly interesting is at odds with how your average grade school teacher analyses literature.
His plots aren't bad and they're certainly influential due to fame, but his greatest asset was being one hell of a wordsmith. Due to how English has evolved you need a reference guide to know half of the puns and references, but his appeal to contemporaries wasn't unlike what popular rappers offer. >

I think the main problem with his work is the huge amount of work required to get anything out of it.  He’s a genius when it comes to language and human psychology, but the amount of background necessary to unpack these gems is way more work than most people want to put in.  It has a crap return on investment.  Sticking to a quick run-through of Romeo and Juliette in high school is fine; at least it has some teen sex and is heavily referenced in popular culture.  But much more than that?  Naw. >

"I think we should stop teaching the most influential man to English literature in literature classes" >

Fucking hated Shakespeare in school >

for real! thank you!!
it's rudimentary storytelling at best. there are only 4700 lines in romeo and juliet, a play about two horny teenagers that cause the deaths of multiple families. your average marvel super hero movie has more depth and nuance. >

I felt this way about a lot of required literature in school and completely stopped reading by high school. It wasn't until I was 35 did I start again, and it's tough to make it through any book. >

I completely agree with OP. I love Billy shakes because he is very inventive with words and he truly understands people and what drives them. But the language is just too outdated for high school. Almost every word needs to be translated. Maybe it should be voluntary at least. >

Romeo and juliet is a classic tale of what happens when you don’t communicate and have a simple conversation 😂😂😂 >

Someone just failed a test on Shakespeare... >

I think you should give kids 50/50 between classic and contemporary, it is good to read classics and modern works >

I loved reading my whole life, I just thought for most of my life (when I was still in school) that I just hated reading something for class. I didn't learn that I was wrong until we read our first contemporary book when I was a senior and I loved it. Turns out I just can't be assed to pretend Shakespeare is funny or that Edgar Allen Poe is thought provoking/mysterious/what ever. Obviously these are just personal opinions, but the drama kids were the only ones who ever actually laughed (after the teacher had to explain the joke). >

If focusing on Shakespeare truly made kids uninterested in literature, then he would've been outdated long back. I mean if you don't like Shakespeare then 9/10 times you're not cut out for the literature field.
As someone who did his bachelor's in electrical and electronics, an equivalent comparison I know is BJTs which has been long replaced by much much superior forms of technology but a lot of undergrad degress teach about BJTs before anything else because it started it all and if you're not interested in BJTs you're not cut out for this field >

Oooh, stop it with your talk of BJT’s, you’re turning me on! >

Oh boy...
What should become part of the curriculum? Harry Potter? >

No, Tolkien. >

From a literary sense, yeah. From a readability sense, LotR has some issues. We tend to gloss over how much poetry and song are included. >

Shakespeare is very relevant today given his plays deal with themes that are still popular and relevant. Plus, many of the words and phrases we use come directly from him. The problem with Shakespeare isn’t the plays or the poems, it’s the terrible teaching where you are expected to analyse huge plays that were only ever intended to be read by the actors. I think the emphasis should be on watching, enjoying and only then reading key parts. That seems to be what happens in my son’s school now, but when i was at school you just read plays from start to finish at if they were books. That put everyone off until Romeo + Juliet came out and we suddenly realised this stuff was pretty good. >

Shakespeare can't be outdated because basically everything he ever wrote about was timeless. He wrote about the eternal unchanging aspects of human nature. And a lot of it feels very modern. Like in the Merchant of Venice, there's a girl who's basically toxic in her relationship and there's a situation where her boyfriend has basically been set up to look like a cheater - except this girl already knows for certain that he has been framed and did not actually cheat. But he doesn't know she knows, so because she just enjoys being a manipulator, she acts like she believes it and she pretends to get really upset so he has to spend time soothing her and proving his love for her, basically just stroking her ego. Idk about you but I absolutely know women like that today. >

The thing about Shakespeare is that his plays are concise therefore they contain a huge amount of English fundamentals (like metonymy, allegory, exposition, etc) that would be more sparsely dispersed if you cracked out a Harry Potter book. If you can't understand antiquated english then join the club but replacing Shakespeare instruction with any contemporary author would be the definition of lazy. >

I remember even watching a Shakespeare play recording and I can't understand a fucking word they say. It's like " Hath has for the to then, for a forth and fifth". No idea why they try to make us understand. >

I wish schools actually made students watch it, or play it themselves
My school just made us read it, paraphrase into normal English, and give a test >

So mix of things here. I disagree that Shakespeare's literature is "dogshit" - that's probably one of the stupidest things I've ever read.
However I do agree not all kids should be forced to study Shakespeare. There is a lot to learn from Shakespeare and there is a reason he is regarded as one of the greatest writers in history, but there is no point forcing teenagers to read him if they can barely read a modern book.
The problem is not studying Shakespeare - there is no point consigning him to "history" as that just shows how ignorant you are of his influence on modern literature and language - but studying him in the wrong way.
Most teenagers should be encouraged to watch a Shakespeare play and learn a little about the context and importance of his work. But slogging though a play in a lesson week after week deciphering line by line is lazy teaching and boring.
The problem is not with Shakespeare, it's with bad and lazy teaching of English literature. And part of that is trying to teach at the pace of the slowest or fastest students in the class - students really should be taught in ability groups and go at a pace that works for them with material that will engage them.
I hated Shakespeare as a child, hated English lessons, and was much more interested in sciences and technology. But I love Shakespear as an adult and love reading in general. The best play I've ever seen in person was Macbeth with Patrick Stewart - it was an incredible play and it was seeing it performed well that brings clarity and meaning to words. >


Having to read and decipher as you read 

Is the point.
Edit: not that everyone has to understand what they read, OR that there aren't other ways to develop comprehension skills or even to communicate meaning. 
Shakespeare is just convenient for English instruction through its ubiquity, tradition, and easily available performances to actually match the words up with actual intended use. I happen to enjoy it, but I also like code reviews, and that is not necessary to use software.
Good luck getting instructors all the way off the Shakespeare train, though. They're still trying to teach cursive writing, which is also not really as precious and necessary a skill as older people think it is. 
Source: my English degree that emphasized playwriting, then 25 years writing software. >

Nope I enjoy the man. But I say cap it off at one play per year. One play for junior and one play for senior year. People who say Shakespeare is boring have no idea the dude is actually hilarious and very witty. >

In my high school we didn’t touch on it AT ALL. And I was in college English by my junior year in high school and completed English 101, 102, and 103 by my senior year/graduation. Neither the high school nor college English classes touched on it. I was the top of my English classes and know nothing about Shakespeare >

Hard physical labor as a child made me detest physical labor as an adult. The same goes for Shakespeare. I didn’t understand it and have struggled to enjoy books ever since. >

When learning English literature, you learn English literature. Shakespeare is old, so hard, but it’s gotta increase your reading ability. If we didn’t study Shakespeare at school I might’ve struggled to read Austen >

Here's an idea: teach him in theatre class and not in literature. 
He is not that outdated, it's just that the language is not meant to be read and analysed. It was meant to be heard. 
To be clear, Shakespeare wrote in verse. He is a particularly poetic writer and half of the shit that he adds into his texts are there because they sounded good to his ear, not because they were an efficient articulation. People did not speak like that in Elizabethan English and chances are that commoners would have understood less than we do today - yet he was still the popular theatre of his day!
But yeah, he is also over-rated, over-studied and given far too much credit in today's classrooms. 
History is not the place to study Shakespeare plays. Neither is English. Put him back in the theatre where he belongs. >

Question: are you advocating for students reading Shakespeare’s plays in history classes or just discussing his impact on things like the development of accessible art and literature? 
Reading Shakespeare is totally integral for a cohesive understanding of literature. While there are some super cool historical implications, he rests as the foundation for the literary canon which is absolutely a topic for an English or Lit course. “Why we read the books we do” and “here’s where these plot structures and archetypes came from” are topics for English, not History and they require Shakespeare. >

So, you think that Shakespeare is too outdated and shouldn't be taught in English class, but instead should be in history class, a field he is even less relevant for?
History is by default something where huge selections happen about what should be taught and what is of less importance simply because you can't teach it all and in general socio-economical and in particular political themes are favored far more than cultural ones. If you then take into account that history is rarely a class that will receive many hours to be taught, it would make very little sense to go in depth on a playwright.
English class however deals with the English literature and language, which are completely up Shakespeare's alley. >

This is such a Kanye West thing to say. 35,000 years of human beings making music to learn and explore, motherfucker buys a drum machine and doesn't even bother to read the instructions. And that's to back saying a bunch of empty headed shit that's already been said a million times way better by much smarter people. But his stan we'll think he's a genius because they're so culturally barren they think he discovered Paul McCartney. Touch grass, buddy >

What does this have to do with Shakespeare? >

Gotta love the OP's irony calling teachers "lazy" for "not moving on" because they won't  just teach easier literature and avoid making  kids think too hard. 
Counter opinion: Mike Judge set Idiocracy way farther into the future than he needed to. >

How old are you? Because I'm not exactly young any more (24) and we 100% studied modern literature. We studied YA literature! We also studied Shakespeare, of course, but he was hardly the only person we studied. People have already listened to opinions like yours and decided you had a point. >


How old are you? Because I'm not exactly young any more (24) 

The real unpopular opinion. >

posts like these are so sad. you really don't think shakespeare was a brilliant writer with gorgeous prose and incredible insight into the human psyche? fine, you're wrong but fine, that's an opinion. but are you really pretending there's no point to reading or teaching him in the modern era? that's like pretending we don't need to study any part of our history simply because it happened so long ago. we remember and discuss shakespeare specifically because he had such an incomparable impact on the world and on the english language, and he was able to do that because of his enormous skill as a storyteller and characterizer. so the problem is either with you, or with shakespeare―which do you really think is the case? >

It doesn't matter what they teach in literature class. Nobody would be interested regardless... You get more out of reading outdated books because the differences in language helps develop reading comprehension. >

The op doth protest too much, methinks.