Piaget Blog

I've long since lost count of the number of people (teens and full-grown adults) who've told me that they don't "get" Shakespeare. That the language and themes are outdated. They think there is nothing they can gain from "suffering" through Shakespeare, and that it just doesn't affect them. But as a lover of The Bard, I can't wait to teach Shakespeare in my classes. And I think Piaget can help me.

I'm pretty sure that the language (early modern English) used by Shakespeare is more than enough to create disequilibrium. But I want to shoot for another kind of disequilibrium, too. Through use of essential questions, I want to get kids thinking, "How do Shakespeare's plays apply to me, and the society I live in?" and "What can I learn from reading Shakespearean plays?" These questions are very much at odds with many people's beliefs, which are probably that it does not apply, and there is nothing to learn from them. I'm hoping that the moment of, "Wait, there is a way this connects to me? There's something I can learn here?" (as the questions imply there is) will spark curiosity, and facilitate learning.

For teaching at the concrete operational level, I will use different visual representations of the play (or scenes from the play) we are reading. For instance, there are the BBC (word-for-word) versions. But there are also modern interpretations, such as 10 Things I Hate About You is an updated look at Taming of the Shrew, with modern language in a high school setting (It doesn't get more concrete than that!). Or one of the numerous movie versions of plays with more modern settings, but authentic language, which can help bridge the gap between what is being said, and what is going on, providing the students with a more familiar context.  I might ask them to write as though they are a character from the play, how they would be feeling or thinking if it were them. We will also go through unfamiliar words and syntax, creating lists of anything that might be confusing, and working some of them out together using context clues, and looking up synonyms or definitions for the rest. These methods seem geared at assimilation: showing them how to fit this weird Shakespeare stuff into their current world view. However, by broadening their vocabulary to include early modern English, they can learn that Shakespeare really isn't so scary, and it can, in fact, be enjoyable. Their schema for "understandable and enjoyable" plays might change from  "only those in contemporary English" to include those "from early modern English up to contemporary," which would be a kind of accommodation.

When we move up to the formal operational level, we will start dismantling and deconstructing the social issues at work within the plays. We can look at the way strong, independent women are treated in Taming of the Shrew, Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream or even Macbeth. We can look at the parent child relationships. We can discuss the reasons for and effects of wars in the plays. We can discuss mental illness and suicide. The list of social issues is virtually endless. I might ask them, in a writing assignment, to transport the characters from the play into a new and unrelated situation. For instance: What political party would Macbeth be part of today and why (or where would he stand on certain "hot button" political issues today)? What TV show would Hamlet be addicted to and why? These questions would get at the essence of characters and require the students to think more abstractly about them. Primarily, I think these strategies are geared towards assimilation, helping the students connect the events and characters to their lives and interest. Ideally, by the end, students will be able to look back at those essential questions I mentioned earlier and answer them (perhaps without even realizing that they have had to change their schema to accommodate Shakespeare).