{"id":5410,"date":"2006-10-02T08:47:10","date_gmt":"2006-10-02T12:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5410"},"modified":"2013-02-01T14:50:31","modified_gmt":"2013-02-01T19:50:31","slug":"teaching-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5410","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Shakespeare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com\/2006\/09\/shakespeare-yes-again-and-again.html\">An indispensable post<\/a> from the indispensable Mental Multivitamin.  Lots of GREAT ideas there &#8211; some which I will take on myself, just for fun.<\/p>\n<p>And I just want to thank her for the following paragraph, for my own reasons, which I will list in a second &#8211; In response to a reader question about how to respond to those who say that learning Shakespeare is not important in today&#8217;s society:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I also suggested that L. take a peek at <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com\/2004\/03\/she-speaks-poniards-and-every-word.html\">this entry<\/a>. There is, I am certain, something about the pursuit of excellence that some people simply. don&#8217;t. get. But life is short, and the struggle to win over the ignorant is, in my experience, futile. I&#8217;d rather <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com\/2004\/02\/this-above-all-to-thine-own-self-be.html\">discuss Hamlet<\/a> than attempt to persuade someone of Shakespeare&#8217;s value .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Amen.<\/p>\n<p>I hate to pull out just one paragraph in that whole cornucopia of paragraphs &#8211; all with great links, great ideas &#8211; but that one really spoke to me.  I have had this struggle before when I write about stuff that I love here.  On Bloomsday, someone inevitably shows up and says, &#8220;Why do you like Joyce?  I find him incomprehensible.&#8221;  And while this is a view held by many, obviously &#8211; to me, it is not interesting to discuss the WHYS of my own taste.  Especially from someone who has a kneejerk response of dislike to something they have not yet experienced.  I won&#8217;t engage with those people because it&#8217;s unbelievably boring to me.  So I would rather discuss James Joyce than attempt to persuade someone of Joyce&#8217;s value.  She put my vague feelings into a perfect and simple sentence.<\/p>\n<p>But seriously &#8211; if you&#8217;re interested in teaching Shakespeare to your kids (and Mrs. M-Mv homeschools her kids &#8211; so this is where a lot of this is coming from) &#8211; or if you&#8217;re a teacher and wondering how to make this stuff real and relevant to your students &#8211; or if you&#8217;re a raging autodidact, if you see your life as a continuing education project for yourSELF &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com\/2006\/09\/shakespeare-yes-again-and-again.html\">please check out this post<\/a>!  She&#8217;s got a bibliography and everything.  But I love her view that the plays are meant to be seen, and heard &#8211; not just read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An indispensable post from the indispensable Mental Multivitamin. Lots of GREAT ideas there &#8211; some which I will take on myself, just for fun. And I just want to thank her for the following paragraph, for my own reasons, which &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5410\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[2134,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62530,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5410\/revisions\/62530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}