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Shakespeare's Birthday: Is The Bard Disappearing From Classrooms?

First Posted: 06/23/2010 5:12 am Updated: 05/25/2011 4:15 pm

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Telegraph UK:

Forget the election, the Clegg bounces and the Brown gyrations. Blank out Icelandic volcanoes and flight disruptions. For today is the happy conjunction of St George's Day and Shakespeare's possible birthday, his 446th no less, as well as the day he died. It is as good a day as any to be celebrating all that is English, and the world's greatest playwright.

Read the whole story: Telegraph UK

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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Mark Harker
52 Fans
05:14 PM on 04/26/2010
Couldn't care less- and i'm an english major.
shakespeare is overrated.
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Oleg1
230 Fans
02:22 PM on 04/26/2010
The sublime heritage of Western literature, music and poetry is being sacrificed in the zeal of multi-culturalism and social promotion of second rate authors, composers, playwrights and poets.
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shthar
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155 Fans
07:39 PM on 04/23/2010
Good. Pearls before swine.
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GraceNotes
We live for books.
225 Fans
02:26 PM on 04/23/2010
Plus, if you really want to insult someone, you simply have to know Shakespeare!
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GraceNotes
We live for books.
225 Fans
02:25 PM on 04/23/2010
This article refers to the curriculum in England's schools, not the US, but I believe the same is happening on this side of the pond as well.
My boss at the library asked me to call the schools recently to ask what "classics" they needed us to have copies of. You know, for book reports, and such assignments. I was told that the English teachers do not have a required book list for students to read from. No, they are allowed to read whatever they want, such as Jodi Piccoult or Stephen King.
No Dickens, no Bronte sisters, no Austen!
I don't know if they still read the Shakespeare plays in class like I did, but I remember having to memorize all of Hamlet's soliloquy and several other long passages from Hamlet, Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet.
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naschkatze
A free man creates himself.
2055 Fans
04:20 PM on 04/23/2010
My high school (USA) did four plays: Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet, and my experience was like yours. I still know the set lines I memorized from those plays as well as other poetry from our side of the pond and theirs. That was 50 years ago, I have to tell you.
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