The Importance of Shakespeare in the New Salem Educational Initiative

As you scroll on down this blog, you will soon see my most recent compressed version of a Shakespearean play.  This that you will arrive upon first will be The Comedy of Errors, the stunningly hilarious work of multiple mistaken identities and circumstances.

 

Scrolling much deeper into the wealth of material now posted on this blog in 497 articles, you will find five other such compressions:

 

King Lear

 

Hamlet

 

Macbeth

 

Julius Caesar

 

Othello

 

 

The most practical impulsion to produce these compressed versions of Shakespeare’s works (from among the total of at least 36 dramas written by this greatest literary practitioner of the English language) has been the annual performances given by my students and me in the New Salem Educational Initiative at our annual banquet.

 

My inspiration for these productions came first in the course of the 2012-2013 academic year.  I have always used Shakespeare in my Psychology classes (at this point in my career, I have taught all major subject area courses at the K-12 level, in additional to East Asian history courses at the university level).  During the academic year of note, I had three extraordinary female students who made perfect daughters Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan to my own portrayal of King Lear;  we successfully presented that production at the June 2013 New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet and never looked back---  except to reflect upon our joy in performing these great works.

 

The hip-hop generation loves words;  Shakespeare is the best wordsmith in history, and the Bard’s themes are replete with resonances to the tenor of life at the urban core.  Less adroit teachers may feel the need to have recourse to the abominable and abominably titled No Fear Shakespeare, but as a genuine aficionado and highly skilled teacher I would never use anything but the original texts.  All of my compressions feature the Bard’s own words, presented in compact form for presentation in our 30-minute performances at the banquets.

 

This year, for the sake of time in a particularly busy summer, I am using my compressed version of The Comedy of Errors in preparation for a most joyous occasion.  After those banquet presentations in June each year, I typically read an entire work from the Bard’s magnificent collection with five to seven students and then go see that play in July with those students at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minnesota.  I pack a lunch, we drive along the Mississippi (which most of my students have never seen beyond the Twin Cities bends), taking a look at the rural scenes that are a first-timer for many of these urban young people.  Given vocabulary-poor educations in the schools of Minneapolis, I inevitably have to review the meaning of “rural” and “urban” for any students who have not yet encountered references to these words in my own instruction during our weekly academic sessions. 

 

I kid you not: 

 

Try these and many other perceptibly ordinary terms out with young people whom you may know, and you’ll get your own sense of just how atrocious are our institutions of K-12 education.

 

After we see the splendid production in Winona, I bring the students by my home for a meal of my preparation:   Once I became famous for my sweet and sour chicken and other Chinese and Taiwanese  accompaniments, any notion of varying the menu with my Mexican, down-home southern soul (which I cook for our annual banquets), Thai, South Asian, vegetarian, and vegan cornucopia became moot.

 

This is, then, an enriching experience for my students from multiple perspectives.

 

And the emphasis on Shakespeare is rooted in my propensity to be the adult who says, in the way of village elders of the past:  “Here is your cultural inheritance, which I am delivering to you as my sacred responsibility.” 

 

This is the sort of commitment that I make as my students and I study the fourteen chapters (Economics, Psychology, Political Science, World Religions,  World History, American History, African American History, Literature, English Usage, Fine Arts, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics) of my Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.

 

Shakespeare is thus a vital component of my total commitment to be the adult that my students need in their lives, one who imparts to them their inheritance as human beings, giving them a knowledge-intensive education of excellence and preparing them according to the three great purposes of education: 

 

cultural enrichment,

 

civic preparation, and

 

professional satisfaction.