pastebin - Shakespeare essay - post number 2151693

        When it comes to Shakespeare, I honestly don’t know where to begin. I mean, the way that he can capture so much emotion and convey such a strong message in a single sentence is nothing short of a miracle. However, although I believe that study of his masterpieces are very beneficial, I urge school administrators to consider taking William Shakespeare’s works out of the freshman and sophomore curriculum because most freshman and sophomore students are not mature enough to understand the complex messages within them.

         As a high school student myself, I have experienced first-hand the extreme negativity attached to the name William Shakespeare. I remember one day sitting in my freshman English class as we were learning about Romeo and Juliet and noticing all of my classmates’ blank stares at the clock as their head rested onto their palms. At that point, I think that a tornado could have torn off the side of the classroom and the students would still have just sat there, oblivious to their surroundings, desperately awaiting the release bell. Noticing this, I asked myself, “Why are the teachers teaching this to us?” I mean, the students, me included, did not see any lessons in the play, did not see any entertainment in the play, and most importantly did not see the relevance of the play. The teacher could have told us how important it is as much as she wanted to, but as Source A so elegantly put it “Shakespeare is irrelevant to anyone who believes that he is irrelevant” and “Those forced to study writers, philosophy, or history they don’t want to study will gain nothing.” What we are essentially doing is like teaching middle school students trigonometry: we can throw lectures at them all that we want, but the vital concepts are not sticking with most of them and they will not be able to effectively use it later in life.

        Keeping this in mind and looking at the bigger picture, we lose a huge range of benefits that could be gained from studying the plays at a later time.  You see, not only does Shakespeare teach us so much about history, but people who have studied Shakespeare in depth “Have a greater understanding of gentleness, poor choices, honesty, integrity, popularity, danger, patriotism, selfishness, self-sacrifice, etc.” (Source C), all of which can be beneficial for finding or maintaining a good job (Source D). However, the key word here is in depth. The unfortunate truth is that in addition to the fact that most kids do not care about Shakespeare, “Those who do [want to study Shakespeare] lose much, because the courses will often be of sufficiently little rigor as not to oppress the bored” (Source A). In other words, classes cannot provide students with an in depth study of Shakespeare until students start to realize his importance, meaning that we don’t get any benefits from studying the plays until that point. From my eyes, the earliest possible time that this may occur is junior year.

        In the end, we can all benefit from studying the works of Shakespeare. However, the only real question is when, and from my perspective it is most definitely not freshman or sophomore year in high school. Thank you for your time.