When I was younger, I thought like you did. Now that I get older, the value of culture and an understanding of where it came from, how it developed, makes my life just so much richer. That does not necessarily mean that I need to have memorised the whole corpus of Shakespeare, but understanding a reference when it comes around is adding more layers of meaning to other works.

This does not only extend to literature. I have had similar experiences with religion (which I thought of as utterly useless and potentially dangerous, as it "deactivates critical thinking and creates sheep-people which will follow whatever their shepherd/priest/guru tells them"), creative arts (both painting as well as music), and the basic sciences (biology, chemistry, physics).

Now, I don't genetically engineer the stuff in my garden, but understanding Mendel was useful. I don't speak in iambic pentameters, but I can appreciate when it is being used as a stylistic choice. I am in no way a church-going, devout Christian, but I have found meaning in some of the deeper wisdom enshrined in the Bible (and the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita, and about half a dozen Sutras.)

Would I have come to that if I didn't have primers in school? Maybe. But the primers certainly helped.

On the other hand, I didn't learn plumbing in school, or laying electrical wires, or "doing my taxes", but these are things I can simply have someone do for me who is a lot better equipped and trained to do so, or - for the small stuff - I can figure them out on the fly.

There is a ton of stuff that makes life richer. That doesn't mean we should be teaching it at schools. I can think of movies, games, novels, TV shows, blogs, and music that have had orders of magnitude more impact on my life and thinking than Shakespeare. Should we be teaching any of that stuff at school?

I'm willing to believe that some people like Shakespeare, but it's a small minority. You can tell by the number of people who read Shakespeare for pleasure - is that number larger or smaller than the number of people who read JK Rowling? Why should we teach the entertainment that a small number of people prefer in schools? I believe the only reason we actually do is tradition.

You mention that you can simply have someone learned in plumbing or sundry skill do those tasks for you. I can do one better. I can simply have no one read Shakespeare for me and I can not read it at all and nothing is lost. That is, of course, because unlike plumbing or laying wire there is no reason to need Shakespeare.

It's good that you enjoy Shakespeare, but some people enjoy plumbing. Plus, plumbing has a practical purpose, unlike Shakespeare. There is no real reason to teach Shakespeare, other than tradition, and people trying to seem smart or educated. There are many other subjects that make a much stronger case for deserving to be in school curriculum.

I read a quote somewhere that goes something like "A society that separates warriors and scholars will have an army led by fools and thinking done by cowards." Similar logic, with different vocabulary, applies, I think, to a society where scholars can't do manual labor.

I like to believe that school works as a catalyst here, showing you stuff you wouldn't normally encounter - you have no trouble accessing popular culture, so there's no need to teach you about that (that's being said, one of my more memorable music lessons was the teacher analysing the composition of Pink Floyd's "Shine on you crazy diamond" with us. I can absolutely see Harry Potter becoming an object of academic study and literature teaching in 50-70 years, it is happening with Tolkien already).

On the other hand, less-than-popular culture still is the foundation for our popular culture today - the amount of times "Romeo and Juliet" or "Macbeth" has been adapted, referenced and deconstructed in (popular) media is astonishing, and without knowing the original, you wouldn't fully get the modern references.

You don't need to love Shakespeare (I don't exactly, though I like to see the "Scottish play" every few years) to reap these benefits.

School is not about what people like. If you go by that measure, there's no real need in math, because you will find a lot less people doing calculus for fun, as compared to people who play fantasy football. Of course, you can't really understand the ideas behind fantasy football if you don't know maths, but who cares, it's not popular...

Please note that I did not claim physical labour has no value and one should not know about it. I said that it's relatively easy to pick up, and that it may be more worthwhile to get a professional when the job demands it (a professional, I would like to add, who learned his craft after school, ideally in some kind of apprenticeship). In my country, to get a driver's license, you need to know basic first-aid procedures (and yes, there's a one-day course you need to attend). That doesn't make you a neurosurgeon, and if you have persistent headaches, it's probably better to ask a professional than to depend on me with my first-aid course - or some guy who "learned about surgery techniques" in high school.

Shakespeare may have a profound impact in the English speaking world. But from the perspective from any other language than English, Shakespeare is an esoteric subject with limited impact. I do agree that the Christian Bible is of immense importance to European and American culture. Today we blithely dismiss all things religious, but I would argue 99% of modern European/American culture has been affected in some way by Christianity. Pretending it doesn't exist has been a major disservice to students.

I think it is because we have gutted the idea of a liberal arts education. Shakespeare is supposed to be read along with a massive amount of other literature going back to the Greeks. We have ditched most of that though besides Shakespeare for some reason so it doesn't make sense and makes him stick out more than he should.