A World without Shakespeare.

I'm not Shakespeare's biggest fan, though I do love his work. Reading a play rather than watching it can be daunting even for a literature buff, but I can't help but think knowledge of Shakespeare is somehow worth the effort.

As a returning novice to the field of education, I've been reminded of the knowing smiles and nods of seasoned veterans.

A novice might say, for example, I might try to teach two novels this semester. To which the veteran will reply - oh! you have honors English? The greenhorn, with a slight frown, answers that she does not, she has academic (read: not academically gifted - funny way of saying it, right?) And the old hand smiles slightly with the left side of her mouth, her eye squinted just slightly, and her head tilting and tittering to the left side. She might say, It's nice that you're so hopeful.

But I don't think she feels that way. I think she feels pity for the tender-hearted tenderfoot. Maybe even a yellow chalk-dusting of schadenfreude.

I'm thirty. I've been out of the profession for years, and I had a horrible experience my first go round. I can remember the days prior to teaching, when I would propound on the need of all people for a quality education that included humanities, critical thinking, and the rudimentaries. I would go on about how anyone who had his or her full mental capacity, i.e. was not mentally handicapped, could learn, could be intelligent and even intellectual. And, when the recipient of this passionate profession would look at me with that sad, disillusioned smile, I'd feel my throat go tight and my eyes well up because I was terrified that I was wrong and, not only wrong, but nuts to boot. As I said, my first experience was horrible, but more due to politics and other disillusioned faculty and immaturity on my own part. So maybe, as they say, believing the same thing again despite the failure of the system the first time is insane.

Nonetheless, lately I've found that same old belief system percolating in my chest, popping up into my throat and making me feel giddy with anticipation, with the idea that I could make a difference, that all...ALL...ABSOLUTELY EVERY ONE...of my students could leave my classroom believing that they are capable of insight and intelligence. Maybe not going to college, but understanding that, while Shakespeare's English may be near unintelligible today, his ideas, his beauty, his thoughtfulness, his wit, his compassion and love for humanity and the human condition are still true and relevant today.

I don't want to live in a world without Shakespeare. But if we don't start forcing kids to learn, really learn, not memorize and not sit quietly and obediently filling in circles with number 2 pencils...LEARN...THINK...GROW...CHALLENGE...if we don't start forcing them to care about their future roles in the world, their future contributions, then Shakespeare will be banished along with wit, beauty, ideas, compassion, and all that other stuff that I like about other people, and they'll all be sitting on some island with Prospero and Calypso and Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson and Pi and God knows who else. And I'll be stuck here with American Idol and that atrocious actor on CSI: Miami. I won't have it, I tell you!

And, yes, I get that look. Some teachers look at me with the sympathetic eyes of a witness to a ship wrecking on rocks far below the cliff on which they safely stand. But, dammit, I don't care! And you can laugh and you can shake your head, too, but I'm going to teach those kids to be intelligent. And if what I'm doing the first semester doesn't work, then I'm going to do something different the next semester. But I will not be down-trodden and I will not surrender the belief that all humans can learn. So there. Pbbbblllltttt. : P