Yeah, my issues with what is taught continue into university.

Brecht is another one that's tough to analyze in a purely academic way.

It is, frankly, hard enough to teach the majority of students in your basic public high school setting the basics -- I'm not even arguing Sh. as a basic here, I'm talking sentence structure, 5 paragraph essay, letterwriting, the basics of plot, compare and contrast, elements of persuasion -- that arguments about whether Shakespeare should be supplanted or deeply supplemented with other playwrights or authors is, sadly, fairly moot.

I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it, cause we should. IJS, that in my teaching experience, it is pretty theoretical for the majority of English teachers.

Huh. "Elements of Persuasion" would make a good Regency romance title. Someone should use it.

I was a theatre and an English Lit major, in college, and I did read a lot of plays for the English major as well, but it may be because I gravitated to classes that taught plays. In lower schools we read The Diary of Anne Frank, 3 Shakespeares, Our Town, and The Crucible, which was a pretty good selection, frankly. I would say that more modern and "harder" plays and authors got neglected equally in my school. Of course, I read a metric shit-ton of plays all on my own-- I was particularly fond of Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg and, weirdly, JM Barrie.

ETA- I can't imagine most of my fellow students in high school going beyond thatany more than I would be able to go beyond precalc- It would be great if high school could actually succeed in teaching the foundations.

I did like it, even though we weren't reading the books at the time, when we discussed authors of different periods in social studies, because it is all connected-- why certain books an certain plays and certain art was created at certain times, and they seem so hard to separate.

I loved Shaw. And reading some of the plays that haven't survived the years can be pretty interesting, too. Yeats did a bunch of plays for the Irish Theater that are influenced by a combination of Noh theater and Irish mythology. (Plus contemporary politics, of course.)

In the class I would be teaching (if I get the job) it'll be all stuff outta a Glecoe text plus Elie Weisel's Night, which is fine, and Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, which kinda bores the fuck out of me. At least it's not The Pearl

I should go look up the Glencoe sophomore text, just to see. We had that text, but I never taught out of texts -- I would just copy the occsional story or poem out of them.

I'm talking sentence structure, 5 paragraph essay, letterwriting, the basics of plot, compare and contrast, elements of persuasion

I'd call some of these elements grade school work. But I see your point -- if high school English teachers are teaching basic writing skills, there isn't much room for mulitple plays.

On the other hand, English teachers, how much does the Elizabethan language interfere with teachability? Would a more contemporary play -- I'll just pick The Glass Menagerie to have a name out there, or a number have mentioned The Crucible -- go more quickly?

On the other hand, English teachers, how much does the Elizabethan language interfere with teachability? Would a more contemporary play -- I'll just pick The Glass Menagerie to have a name out there, or a number have mentioned The Crucible -- go more quickly?

Yes, but the language barrier can be overcome through exposure and (more importantly) teaching through performance. When the kids have to get their hands dirty with putting a scene together, they figure it out. (And then they run around trying to talk like Elizabethans, which is the cutest thing ever.)

On the other hand, English teachers, how much does the Elizabethan language interfere with teachability?

I admit, it certainly poses an obstacle to be surmounted. My last school, a high percentage of my students were ELL or from households were Spanish was spoken primarily. I would teach the beginning of the play using No Fear Shakespeare, which has the Elizabethen English on one page, and the corresponding vernancular English on the other page. It was like training wheels...they would slowly be responsible for reading more and more of the play in the Elizabethan, and key passages were always something they would have to be able to suss out the meaning on a test or quiz.