Should Shakespeare Be Taught In Schools Essay

William Shakespeare, a well renowned playwright that died almost 400 years ago, but despite him not even existing he is still being taught in schools. For decades we have taught his plays from centuries ago, he’s works are dull, outdated and unnecessary. Characteristics of his plays would be classed as discriminatory and a big waste of our time, we should be reading other books that would be easier to understand. Shakespeare may be famous but is that any reason to teach his work in an English classroom that should focus on improving our writing skills?

Shakespeare’s plays involve aspects that would be looked down on in today’s society by supporting only one religion and race. These negative properties are shown throughout the majority of his plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Twelfth Night. In today’s society around "44 per cent of Australians were born in other countries or are the children of parents from other countries" this is stated by Jenifer Bowes. Our society has been proven to be multicultural we need to accept that and embrace that so everyone can be fully accepted

in our modern society and not neglect that fact by watching Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare’s society only consisted the one culture and that is reflected in his plays.
Some people will argue that Shakespeare’s plays are good learning experience or they contain good themes and messages, but how are we meant to find them if we spend more time on trying to understand the words.

We won’t use the old language we find in class anywhere so what’s the point in adding to our already confusing language. I’m not the only one to think this Claire from youth voices said “Learning up to our potential is not about understanding words and phrases that we will never use…learning up to our potential is learning about the vocab and phrases that will help us improve our writing,…”Classes can spend hours on trying to understand sentences and this is just time that could be spent on deciphering the story as a whole and finding those messages that we will use. What is the point in reading something where we spend more time understanding the lines instead of the

messages?
We shouldn’t be wasting so much time on Shakespeare we would be better off learning about other authors that can deliver a better result. William Shakespeare is not the only writer that exists, there are countless numbers of authors and even more so books. High School teacher Dana Dusbiber has written an article on why she doesn’t want to assign Shakespeare, she states “I do not believe that a long-dead, British guy is the only writer who can teach my students about the human condition.” This statement is just proof that there are more writers that can teach students about human behaviour and the way we live that will allow for discussion in the classroom.
William Shakespeare has left a legacy he is well known throughout the English world, but he was alive almost four hundred years ago. Reading Shakespeare’s plays are just a waste of time they are out of touch with the modern world, we need to focus on reading stories that apply to our world. The old language takes up too much time trying to understand, time that could be spent ‘learning up to our potential’. English classrooms are meant for improving our writing to today’s standard so we don’t need to look to the past, to look at Shakespeare to improve our writing today.