Well, there are students who are able to read and understand it, and my experience is that the students who can do these things get offended when you dumb things down for them.
I suppose these are incompatible viewpoints of the point of education.
My viewpoint is that the system should help students get to the point where they understand the more complicated Shakespearean texts and not offend the students who already handle those texts for what I am loathe to describe as the "benefit" of the students that don't.
I have to ask a question - what do you see as the benefits of teaching Shakespeare as literature?
I see the following: learning classics of the English Language and why they are classics, learning foundational parts of the English language that will often be referred to by other authors.
The first benefit seems to be removed by not teaching the original text - Shakespearean plots are seldom the reason one thinks the plays are so impressive, Shakespearean language is. Remove the language you remove a benefit for the student, albeit giving them another benefit, allowing them to pass this stupid English class with less work.
I can understand the urge to have a simpler version of stories for helping those who are not yet advanced enough to read the original, when I was 8 I had some simplified versions of Mark Twain and Dickens to read that I am grateful for, but on the other hand High School is pretty close to the point where students might never get the benefits of Shakespeare conveyed to them by a teacher who hopefully is adequate to convey those benefits (I have to admit I am not especially optimistic about these teachers existing, based on the Utah high schools I attended, but such is the American educational system)
I suppose these are incompatible viewpoints of the point of education.
My viewpoint is that the system should help students get to the point where they understand the more complicated Shakespearean texts and not offend the students who already handle those texts for what I am loathe to describe as the "benefit" of the students that don't.
I have to ask a question - what do you see as the benefits of teaching Shakespeare as literature?
I see the following: learning classics of the English Language and why they are classics, learning foundational parts of the English language that will often be referred to by other authors.
The first benefit seems to be removed by not teaching the original text - Shakespearean plots are seldom the reason one thinks the plays are so impressive, Shakespearean language is. Remove the language you remove a benefit for the student, albeit giving them another benefit, allowing them to pass this stupid English class with less work.
I can understand the urge to have a simpler version of stories for helping those who are not yet advanced enough to read the original, when I was 8 I had some simplified versions of Mark Twain and Dickens to read that I am grateful for, but on the other hand High School is pretty close to the point where students might never get the benefits of Shakespeare conveyed to them by a teacher who hopefully is adequate to convey those benefits (I have to admit I am not especially optimistic about these teachers existing, based on the Utah high schools I attended, but such is the American educational system)