Dame Susan Devoy: Bard to be, or not to be?

It's difficult to find something to read about other than the Rugby World Cup these days but an interesting article caught my eye this week.

According to proposed changes, a level three NCEA English component that asks students to respond critically to a Shakespearean drama will expire next year and not be replaced. This reinforces the long-running debate about keeping Shakespeare in the school curriculum.

It is the last Shakespeare-specific unit in the English curriculum and losing it would mean studying the great Bard will now be the decision of the teacher.

Depending on who you talk to, the response varies, from the absolutely delighted teenagers who have found and continue to find Shakespeare boring, dull and totally irrelevant, to the moderately concerned who, while understanding it might not be everybody's cup of tea, believe it should still be taught, to the passionate followers of literature who liken removing Shakespeare from the English curriculum to removing the periodic table from chemistry.

My teenage sons would probably be horrified that their mother would be suggesting that this is wrong, however, I have it on good authority that they won't read this because they don't read anything. Despite years of following the advice of the plethora of parenting manuals we possess we have failed dismally to inspire our boys to read.

We religiously read bedtime stories to them every night for years. We role modelled good examples by reading ourselves and we own enough books of virtually every genre to start our own children's library. Still no success. That's not to say they have been academic failures - just preferring maths and the sciences.

I can recall attending parent-teacher interviews with English teachers concerned that my son didn't appear to be engaged. Hang on, isn't that your job? I have done my bit, but isn't it true of every subject that so often it's not what's being taught but how?

I recall learning Shakespeare at school. I liked it but then I enjoyed English and drama and found all other subjects dull, boring and irrelevant. My teachers made Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet come to life not by simply sending us home to read a play written in a language that even the most intelligent would initially find hard to grasp, but by re-enactment, by delivery and presentation.

Let's face it, most children these days struggle with the basics of the English language. Soon we will have NCEA exams written in text language if we continue to dumb down the system and remove everything that is dull, boring, yet challenging.

I never really appreciated Shakespeare until my early 20s when I went to the Globe theatre in London. There I got to fully appreciate and understand Shakespeare at its best. And yes, some will never like this in the same way I will never like science fiction. While we can't all travel to the home of Shakespeare, the local Detour theatre annually puts on a Shakespeare play that is just absolutely fantastic. Actually, it's not too late to see their latest production, Much Ado About Nothing, and it's right on your own doorstep and so unbelievably inexpensive.

"The lady doth protest too much methinks", a quote from Hamlet. Apart from the Bible, Shakespeare's is possibly the most quoted writing. Michael Hurst, one of New Zealand's renowned actors, said: "It's a cop-out to say that Shakespeare is 'too hard' to teach. To say the language is a difficulty and a problem is to cut off at the knees the whole notion of study and the benefits of digging into literature and aiming high.

"Shakespeare offered teenagers the universal themes of love, revenge and jealousy. All of those things that teenagers feel so intensely. Maybe the students should just have to step up to the challenge."

Perhaps he's right. Hindsight is a marvellous thing that only adults fully appreciate. How does a teenager really know that what is boring and irrelevant today may in the future be meaningful and relevant?

Those making critical decisions need to be mindful that what is gone today may well be gone forever.