Alberto Rosas

9th Grade Humanities

Ms. Shirk

April 20, 2017

Shakespeares Irrelevancy

It has been over 450 years since the death of William Shakespeare yet for some reason

educators continue to be obsessed with him and his pieces. The topic of Shakespeare not being

necessary to be taught in the common core is one that resonates with many people. Many

teaching methods are outdated including the Shakespeare curriculum, which should be replaced

by more generally diverse writers, and leave Shakespeare in his grave.

The fact that Shakespeare is still in common core is just another example of how outdated

some teaching subjects are. Taken from Dana Dusbibers article, Why I dont want to assign

Shakespeare anymore (even though hes in the common core), she states Mostly, I do not

believe I should do something in the classroom just because it has always been done like that

way. Dusbibers claim that you shouldnt blindly follow because of tradition is not only

applicable to Shakespeare but for life and so many things not only in our education but in our

world that are outdated, and products such as Othello and Hamlet fall under that category. Our

common core should be therefore expanded upon and much more diverse through the authors.

As if it isnt known enough, the people we teach about in history and literature classes are

mostly dead white guys, and school as well as educators should widen their horizons. ...I enjoy

reading a wide range of literature written by a wide range of ethnically-diverse writers who tell

stories about the human experience as its experienced today...acknowledge him as a chronicler
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of life as he saw it 450 years ago.... As she states that Shakespeare was simply someone who

simply recorded life how he saw it but leave it at that. Also, you can see that Dusbiber is trying

to persuade the fact that shes well educated in relation to literature because of the variants of

books she reads, and therefore has a better understanding of life and the struggles of a human

today, not almost five centuries ago. As we should begin to focus our education more on diverse

authors, it is also the time for the Bard to be laid to rest.

It is time for new authors and different cultures to have the same representation in the

classroom instead of reading the same Shakespeare play over and over again. Another point

brought up by Dusbiber is ...why not teach the oral tradition of Africa, which includes and

equally relevant commentary on human behavior? Why not teach translations of early writings or

oral storytelling from Latin America or southeast Asia and other parts of the world? She tries to

bring up the point of equal representation and believes that teaching other authors and/or

literature from other parts of the world not only would provide better culture for her students, but

would also serve just as well as far as teaching goes. So now, whats left is developing a literary

sense that is more in touch with current day or more diverse writers that relate more with todays

youth.

While opinions that Shakespeare should continue to be popularized due to his supposed

relevancy with todays culture and specifically teenagers and young adults, but who better to

relate to a teenagers struggle than someone who has actually experienced it how it is today, or

how certain groups of people are forced to face hardships. You have to give credit to
Shakespeare for being an influential literary idol and influential in his time, but times have

changed.