Was It Good For You?
I’ve been in a survey mood lately, so I’m going to ask more questions. I like hearing your responses. 
A little over a week ago I found the website Ask500People, which gives you the chance to ask a question to whoever happens to stumble across that website, as well as visitors of your own site if you choose to put the poll on it. I asked the question, “Did you have a good experience studying Shakespeare in school?” You can click on that to vote and/or see the results.
As of now, when I am posting this I have 130 responses. 57% of the voters answered yes, 43% answered no. Out of 6 comments, 5 left responses saying they had a negative experience. Most the the responses I got were from North America, but a few from elsewhere.
With only 130 answers, this isn’t a great representation of the average school Shakesperience, but it was interesting to see these numbers. To be honest I was expecting more people to have answered No. Even so, that’s a lot of people who didn’t have fun with Shakespeare in school. With all this talk about Shakespeare in schools, especially with the RSC launching their Stand Up For Shakespeare program, I think it’s good to see where we’ve come from and where we want to be headed with Shakespeare in Education.
And now I invite you to leave a comment here about YOUR Shakespeare experiences in school. When were you first required to read one of his plays? Which play? Did you get to get up and perform at all? Whatever you want to share I’d like to hear. I’ll post my experiences soon, though I’m sure your story is more interesting than mine.
Duane Mar 20
The funny thing is, despite going on to run my own Shakespeare site, I would answer no to this question. I had to go through all the same routine – memorize the balcony scene, watch the Olivier Hamlet, compare and contrast the role of the avenging son as seen in Laertes, Hamlet and Horatio…and so on. All the standard stuff, and while I had fun memorizing, it was just like any other subject – nobody else likes it, so if you do like it, then nobody will like you.
My interest in Shakespeare for real didn’t come until college.
Naomi Mar 21
Hello
I always think people’s experiences of Shakespeare depend on the teacher. I was lucky in that I had a good English Lit teacher both at school and college. I’ve always loved Shakespeare and part of the fun is trying to decipher the Old English terminology that William Shakespeare used.
P.S. I’ve submitted a post to your carnival. I think you have a great site here and would love to swap links with you if that’s of interest. I will also do a little post on your site so you may gain some more visitors from that. This is quite a unique site and the first of its kind I’ve come across on the net. Keep up the good work!
Gedaly Mar 21
Thank you so much for the kind words, Naomi. I really appreciate that.
And you’re quite right about the teacher. That goes for any subject really. I love history, but I’ve had teachers that were horrible so I started to loathe it. Same goes for almost any subject during Jr. High or High School. A few in college, but I mostly only took classes I was interested in already and was lucky to have some wonderful professors.
Duane, it’s not such a “funny thing.” My experience was very similar. I think I’ll write about it soon in a new post.