Coles, J., (2013) "The common property of us all?

"
from Teaching English 1 pp.58-62, Sheffield,
National Association for the Teaching of English. [5 pages]

The common property of us all?

pp. 58-62

"The common property of us all?", Teaching English

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Course of Study: CCME0035 - Shakespeare in Education

Title: Teaching English: "The common property of us all?"
Name of Author: Coles, J., (2013) "The common property of us all?" from Teaching English 1 pp.58-62, Sheffield,
National Association for the Teaching of English. [5 pages]

Name of Publisher: National Association for the Teaching of English

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58 NATE Teaching English Issue 1

 Secondary

Education is about the transfer of knowledge from one students' dangerously self-fulfilling' expectations that "Pupils are
generation to the next...The facts, dates and narrative of Shakespeare will be too hard for them; and that much
our history in fact join us all together. The rich language teaching time needs to be spent in 'unpicking the bad invited to
of Shakespeare should be the common property of us
all. The great figures of literature that still populate the
habits' formed through `character-based criticism' (p.7). read and value
conversations of all those who regard themselves as well- National Curriculum Shakespeare canonical
educated should be known to all...And they must be taught And yet government policy persists in prescribing texts in
to everyone. and testing a highly regulated dose of high culture.
(former Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, 2010) Since 1991 all subsequent versions of the English different
Orders, whether initiated by Conservative or New ways to works
Shakespeare for all: twenty years on Labour administrations, have retained some form of
It is over twenty years since Shakespeare was made statutory list of canonical texts. In the way literature outside the
a compulsory - and, significantly, a compulsorily is conceptualised, the underlying view of classic texts canon."
assessed - component of the National Curriculum for as fetishised object remains largely unaltered. Even
secondary students. At the time of writing, the revised in the current (2007) National Curriculum document
curriculum for secondary English has not yet been references to Shakespeare are steeped in canonical
published, but all early indications point to a renewed discourse, language which serves to undermine
emphasis on canonical literature. Behind the current philosophical claims to inclusivity.
government's 'Great Books' approach to the National Put simply, pupils are invited to read and value
Curriculum there appears to be a commonly held belief canonical texts in different ways to those works which
that all school students benefit from access to a shared sit outside of the established canon. So, Shakespeare and
cultural heritage. Popular wisdom says that compulsory other major writers stand for 'quality' to be appreciated,
Shakespeare has a democratically transformative whereas texts from `different cultures and traditions'
effect on pupils, even liberating them from a 'shadow are to be interrogated in terms of their 'values and
of ignorance' according to Michael Gove (2010). But assumptions' (QCA, 2007, section 3.2). No Secretary
what empirical evidence exists that might support such of State for Education in either the Blair or the Brown
claims? How is Shakespeare constructed in secondary administrations between 1997 and 2010 demonstrated
classrooms, and what purpose is actually served by either the ideological inclination or the political will to
obligatory study? adopt a different cultural agenda. Thus, for instance,
Shakespeare has consistently been constructed by
"Popular wisdom says
that Shakespeare has a
transformative effect on pupils:'
Initially, the answers to these questions do not
look promising. Certainly, evidence from Rex Gibson's
Shakespeare in Schools project (Gibson, 1998) or the
continuing RSC 'Stand up for Shakespeare' initiative
(for example, RSC, 2008) suggest that drama-based
or 'active' approaches render Shakespeare plays more
accessible and enjoyable, yet little classroom-based
research evidence exists which demonstrates that it is
the study of Shakespeare per se which is beneficial (we
know sugar-coating makes the medicine more palatable,
but not whether the medicine actually works).
When talking to young people in urban British
schools, researchers such as Neelands (2008) and
Yandell (1997) indicate that students' initial assumptions
about 'doing' Shakespeare are predictably negative
(e.g., `Shakespeare is for posh people'). Unfortunately,
attitudinal surveys of pupils involved in the RSC's
Learning and Performance Network (a professional
development programme run jointly with the University
of Warwick), lead researchers to conclude that it is
hard to shift young people's deep-seated antipathy to
Shakespeare (Galloway and Strand, 2010) even in the
context of an otherwise successful and well-resourced
national intervention programme.
Even more worryingly, secondary school Shakespeare
is found wanting as preparation for undergraduate
study: a survey undertaken by the Higher Education
Academy English Subject Centre (Thew, 2006) indicates
a significant level of concern amongst university
teachers. Key amongst those concerns are: students'
`lack of linguistic, historical and cultural knowledge';

NATE , Teaching English Issue 1159

 Feature: The Common Property of US All?
I

and written') as part of his educational crusade, at the In

same time rejecting more popular forms of culture consist
(apparently including Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Shakes
Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird) as 'cheap sensation and hard kr
easy pleasure' (Gove, 2010). In an interesting choice reduce
of metaphor barely two months after urban riots and by the
looting in the UK, he described his vision of education for my
in terms of inherited wealth, where high culture is a disal
a 'legacy' or 'treasure-house of wonder' providing envisag
compensation for a lack of material privilege: of forn
We may not all be able to inherit good looks or great specific
houses, but all of us are heir to the amazing intellectual with a
achievements of our ancestors... (Gove, 2011) annotat
grids (si
The tendency to construct canonical literature as a the stuc
collection of valuables to be bequeathed to the next to be n
generation is to form a view of culture as somehow structur
separate from the daily lives of ordinary people. More and con
useful to us as teachers, I believe, is Raymond Williams'
Conner
concept of culture as a productive social practice,
something which we make and remake as well as But,
consume (see, for example, Williams, 2005), and with provide;
which we critically engage in order to make sense of our with Sh.
lives and imagine different social possibilities. not sus
The most recent Government-commissioned report students
into 'cultural education', the Henley Review (2012), has school -
been warmly welcomed by many teachers because of its based a(
strong promotion of a range of cultural activities within culturall
the school curriculum. At the same time, however, Franks e
Henley constructs culture as something to be 'taught' In two
as much as experienced, and appears to privilege the opportur
works of 'great authors, poets and playwrights of the own cult
past' (section 3, paras 30 & 31), giving rise to a deficit physical
view of the cultural experiences most young people role play
bring to school. In the pages of the Review, culture that drar
is constructed first and foremost as knowledge (3.13) `always a
to be learnt primarily in school (2.3), as an entity to advantag
be appreciated (3.14), and as something likely to be me, is to
lacking from children's lives who come from 'deprived the read(
backgrounds' (3.7). and reply
My own classroom-based research would lead me readers' i
to argue that the inclusion of Shakespeare or other the text.
curriculum documents in England as part of the
canonical writers in the National Curriculum as discrete classroom
`literary heritage' within the programme of study for
parcels of cultural knowledge does little to relieve this sometime
reading; by way of contrast, Shakespeare is constructed
`deprivation' (see Coles, 2012). Indeed, in demanding playscripl
as a performance dramatist in the most recent Welsh
that all young people have 'equal access' to Shakespeare, the speci
version (Marshall, 2011).
policy-makers create the false expectation that students Programa
will relate to it in undifferentiated ways, whatever their adequatel
social and economic background. As Neelands (2008, reading.
"Promoting the notion of a 'common culture' p.11) comments, 'In terms of power, all cultures are not And, e
Shakespe;
is a convenient strategy for politicians at equal' and merely providing access to 'great authors'
addressed
will not result in a redistribution of cultural wealth.
times of crisis." Drawing on Bourdeusian notions of cultural capital, students
Neelands argues that, 'Access and belonging to the them, exi
culture of power requires knowledge of its symbolic and and begin
`A treasure-house of wonder'? cultural heritage' (p.10). Curriculur
Particularly noticeable in current coalition Ministers' research s
pronouncements is the invocation of Shakespeare as Shakespeare in four London classrooms whilst rer
the saviour of the poor and dispossessed. Promoting the My own case study research based in two London unlikely tc
notion of a 'common culture' is a convenient strategy comprehensive schools attempts to raise questions Shakespel-
for politicians at times of economic or social crisis. For about ways in which four different teachers construct There a
example, Michael Gove's Arnoldian vision of cultural Shakespeare discursively and pedagogically in which mii
education is constituted as a form of morally uplifting the classroom. Evidence was gathered from direct exploratioi
social glue. Speaking to a Cambridge University observation of year 9 and year 10 classrooms, interviews only teach
audience last year, Gove appropriated Shakespeare, with teachers and students at the end of the unit of example, it
Wagner and Balzac (`the best that has been thought work, and analysis of students' essays. questions

60 I NATE I Teaching English I Issue 1


t the
1ture
In all four classrooms, despite two teachers'
consistent use of 'active' drama-based approaches,
and Shakespeare is ultimately constructed as a body of
and
Dice
hard knowledge, so difficult that it has to be broken up,
reduced to manageable fragments and heavily mediated
and by the teacher. For many of the students interviewed
ition
-e is
for my study, reading a Shakespeare play has been
a disabling rather than the liberating experience
ding envisaged by Michael Gove. Constrained by systems
of formal assessment, students are apprenticed into
specific literacy practices where ways of interacting
treat
'tual with a Shakespeare script are frequently reduced to
annotating scraps of text, compiling lists and completing
grids (see, for instance, Coles, 2009). Thus, for many of
as a the students I interviewed, Shakespeare study appears
:text to be more about procedural aspects of assignment
how structure (the ubiquitous PEE) than it is about creating
tore and contesting meanings.
ims'
tice, Connecting with Shakespeare
1 as But, significantly, my classroom observation also
vith provides glimpses of more productive ways of engaging
our with Shakespeare, although these moments are often
not sustained. Where connections are made with
)ort students' own beliefs, experiences and lives outside
has school - most often in episodes of collaborative, drama-
f its based activity - meanings are generated in a more
:hin culturally engaged way (see also, Turvey et al., 2006,
ver, Franks et al., 2006).
ght' In two of the classrooms I observed drama offers an
the opportunity where students can be seen to draw on their
the own cultural resources within a social, imaginative and
:icit physical framework, most marked in improvisation and
pie role play. Franks (1999, pp39-40) argues persuasively
that drama as an 'active mode of meaning making' is
ure
.13) `always about social encounters'. One of drama's other
to advantages in the teaching of Shakespeare, it seems to
me, is to rupture the default curricular construction of
be
ved the reader as a lone individual inherited from Leavis,
and replace it with a more dynamic understanding of
me readers' inter-relationships with each other and with
her the text. In reality, nearly all the reading in the four
ete classrooms I observed is public and/or collaborative;
his sometimes the object of attention is a piece of printed
ing playscript and sometimes a moving image version of
ire, the specific play. Neither the National Curriculum
nts Programmes of Study, nor current assessment systems
eir adequately reflect this common classroom model of
08, reading.
lot And, even more significantly, I would maintain,
)rs' Shakespeare's weighty cultural baggage needs to be
th. addressed within dedicated curriculum space, so that
tal, students can unpick what Shakespeare signifies to
:he them, explore where those assumptions come from
nd and begin to ask questions about what the National
Curriculum means by the term 'cultural heritage'. My
research suggests that 'active methods' on their own,
whilst rendering Shakespeare more enjoyable, are
on unlikely to be sufficient to encourage the notion that
ins `Shakespeare' is a site of debate and contestation.
ict There are several moments in my lesson transcripts
in which might have acted as cues for some critical
!ct exploration of Shakespeare's iconic reputation, if
ws only teachers did not feel so pressurised for time. For
of example, in a year 9 classroom, Emma and Zufie's naive
questions about the preservation of Shakespeare's
Secondary
reputation (`Did they put his brain into something?');
Muna, the year 10 student who challenged her teacher's
"Several
assertion that Shakespeare is important to us all; Ade moments
and Owsun, two capable and articulate year 10 boys
who exaggeratedly refused to even try and understand a
might have
straightforward piece of Henry V script while preparing acted as cues
for their GCSE essay; and Abeola's genuine surprise -
after studying Macbeth at KS3 and Romeo and Juliet at
for some
KS4 - on discovering that 'they do it [i.e. Shakespeare's exploration of
plays] in the theatre!' Shakespeare's
Shakespeare, culture and power
iconic
An emergent pattern arising out of my interviews reputation."
with students at the end of the unit of work is a lack
of intellectual confidence in the face of Shakespeare's
iconic reputation as a genius and as the ultimate exam
text. It is the idea that Shakespeare has the potential
to validate an individual's intellectual worth that
seems most to disempower students I interviewed.
For the majority of them, Shakespeare remains an
artefact identified with 'boffins', 'old-fashioned' or
`posh' people's lives. Yet the 'democratic entitlement'
argument pursued by policy-makers claims that
compulsory school Shakespeare should break down
these distinctions by offering universal access to those
cultural forms associated with privilege. Unfortunately,
for many of the students in my study, Shakespeare
packaged as reified school knowledge rather than as
part of a broad cultural experience means that the
classroom encounter for the most part leaves initial
preconceptions intact.
Unsurprisingly, the minority of students in my study
who take Shakespeare confidently in their stride, talk in
"Where connections are made with students'
own beliefs, experiences and lives, meanings
are generated in a more engaged way."
interview about family theatre visits and conversations
about Macbeth around the dinner table. I am reminded
of Bourdieu's argument that our relationship with
cultural forms depends upon the circumstances in
which we experience it, 'because the act whereby
culture is communicated is, as such, the exemplary
expression of a certain type of relation to the culture'
(Bourdieu, 1976, p.198). Responses from the year 9 and
10 students I interviewed suggest that the extent to
which they feel that Shakespeare is part of their own
cultural heritage is highly variable, despite repeated
curriculum forays into the plays or into Shakespeare's
life and times from primary school onwards.
Unpopularisation
In his fascinating book exploring the ways in which
modern popular culture appropriates, contests and
affirms Shakespeare, Douglas Lanier (2002) coins
the term `unpopularisation' to describe the historical
process by which Shakespeare's work has evolved over
centuries from commercially successful playhouse
entertainment to literary high culture. He suggests
that this history 'is closely tied to the history of cultural
stratification' (p.21), in other words how class interests
have constructed distinctions between so-called
`highbrow' and 'lowbrow' cultural tastes. Significantly,
NATE 1Teaching English Issue 1 I 61
I Feature: The Common Property of US All?
Lanier highlights early twentieth
century professionalisation of
Shakespeare study as a defining
moment in this transformation,
the effect of which is analysed in
some detail by Andrew Murphy
(2008) in his study of working
class readers of Shakespeare.
Murphy explores the way in
which nineteenth century political
activists such as Chartists adopted
Shakespeare for themselves, not
only reinventing Shakespeare as a
kind of working class autodidact,
but reading his plays through a
radical lens, locating in the texts
support for political agitation.
Ironically, Murphy identifies the
introduction of mass schooling in
the late nineteenth century as an
important factor in undermining
working class readers' voluntary
connections with Shakespeare.
Redefining Shakespeare as an
object of dry scholastic attention,
it became regarded as something
that required specialist study.
Murphy concludes that the way
in which Shakespeare is formulated in the current
education system means that, 'a knowledge and
appreciation of Shakespeare...is part and parcel of a
culture of success, and ultimately, a culture of power'
(p.202).
Scraps of culture
Teachers I interviewed for my research were
philosophically wedded to the notion that Shakespeare
should be available for all, but their abiding concerns
were that the majority of their students would struggle
to understand or connect with it. My research evidence
suggests that teachers' well-meaning (and time-
"The new consuming) efforts to render Shakespeare 'accessible'
orders within the current assessment constraints, may almost
represent achieve the opposite by reinforcing their students'
a vision of
expectations that they are, somehow, not quite up to
it. In contrast, Irish's recent account (2011) of a teacher
education working in a more dialogically open way that trusts her
students' own cultural capacities, suggests that this is a
in which risk worth taking.
scraps of elite So, after more than twenty years of compulsory
National Curriculum Shakespeare we are on the cusp
culture are of a new set of English orders which are likely to reflect
`transferred' to the ringing endorsement of a facts-based approach to
canonical forms of culture as described by Nick Gibb
the culturally in the quotation with which I opened this article. It
impoverished: represents a vision of education in which selected scraps
of elite culture are 'transferred' from the advantaged
(`those who regard themselves as well-educated') to the
culturally impoverished. As such it would take Lanier's
concept of `unpopularisation' to its logical conclusion.
References
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of thought. in Dale, R., Esland, G. & Macdonald, M.
(eds.) Schooling and capitalism. London and Henley:
Routledge Kegan Paul/Open University Press.
62 1 NATE 1 Teaching English 1 Issue 1
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teaching Macbeth in a year 9 classroom', English in
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the most n
Jane Coles
is Senior Lecturer in Education at Oxford Brookes initiative
University