The teaching of shakespeare in American secondary schools

Abstract

What shall we do with Shakespeare? Have his plays a legitimate place in the curriculum of our high schools or should they be replaced by other materials? Many of us who are charged with the teaching of the great classics of English and American literature are asked to discuss such queries from time to time with our friends at work in the field of the curriculum. The enormous increases in the secondary school enrollments in the United States during the last forty years have greatly complicated the problems of the teaching profession. The field of English has shared in that experience. What to include from the mass of the great masterpieces that will be appropriate to the interests and abilities of the whole school population has constituted a pressing problem of ever-increasing magnitude since the country has become committed, progressively, to the proposition that educational opportunity shall be made available to all the children of all the people. The employment of the plays of Shakespeare as teaching material in American secondary schools is the focal point of a recent study which surveyed the methods used in teaching the plays throughout the entire period of their inclusion in the curriculum of American high schools and described the current methods used by a carefullyselected group of superior teachers of English. This study,t in a sense, is supplementary to those of Simon2 and Hays3 which describe, in part, the employment of Shakespearean material in school readers and in college texts and the relation of the influence of college entrance requirements on the English offerings of the secondary schools.