HebrideanUltraTerfHecate on Nostr: The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue ...
The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/daisy-may-cooper-is-dead-wrong-about-shakespeare-being-irrelevant-zprfqzzb5
Every year it happens. Every year, at some point, it becomes necessary to go once more unto the breach, so to speak, to defend the honour of William Shakespeare. And not just his honour, really, but his worth and relevance.
Too long, too boring, too old, too difficult. And now, too dead. Daisy May Cooper, Bafta award-winning actress, has claimed teaching Shakespeare to today’s youth is the equivalent of asking schoolchildren in the year 2625 to study old EastEnders scripts. “It’s the fing same, move on,” she said. “It’s so depressing. We did Shakespeare at school and I didn’t know what I was saying. Why are we still going on about Shakespeare? He’s fing dead.”
And school is meant to be hard, it is meant to be a challenge. The announcement by the National Literacy Trust that audiobooks should be used alongside the written word to help with young engagement, as if the two are equal, is profoundly depressing. Listening to a bedtime story is not the same as learning to read. Anyone can listen. Following the action on the page, understanding the language, looking up a new or strange word, that’s education. By all means utilise audio to change the daily routine, by all means apply it to engage. But it can never be a replacement for reading, and making it so is habit-forming. The most recent National Literacy Trust survey confirmed this. Among 8 to 18-year-olds, 42.3 per cent said they enjoyed listening to audio content against 34.6 per cent who said they liked reading. It is hardly a surprise that the easier path is preferred.
https://archive.ph/fIKur
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/daisy-may-cooper-is-dead-wrong-about-shakespeare-being-irrelevant-zprfqzzb5
Every year it happens. Every year, at some point, it becomes necessary to go once more unto the breach, so to speak, to defend the honour of William Shakespeare. And not just his honour, really, but his worth and relevance.
Too long, too boring, too old, too difficult. And now, too dead. Daisy May Cooper, Bafta award-winning actress, has claimed teaching Shakespeare to today’s youth is the equivalent of asking schoolchildren in the year 2625 to study old EastEnders scripts. “It’s the fing same, move on,” she said. “It’s so depressing. We did Shakespeare at school and I didn’t know what I was saying. Why are we still going on about Shakespeare? He’s fing dead.”
And school is meant to be hard, it is meant to be a challenge. The announcement by the National Literacy Trust that audiobooks should be used alongside the written word to help with young engagement, as if the two are equal, is profoundly depressing. Listening to a bedtime story is not the same as learning to read. Anyone can listen. Following the action on the page, understanding the language, looking up a new or strange word, that’s education. By all means utilise audio to change the daily routine, by all means apply it to engage. But it can never be a replacement for reading, and making it so is habit-forming. The most recent National Literacy Trust survey confirmed this. Among 8 to 18-year-olds, 42.3 per cent said they enjoyed listening to audio content against 34.6 per cent who said they liked reading. It is hardly a surprise that the easier path is preferred.
https://archive.ph/fIKur