Ranjini Krishnaswamy
No serious English teacher can afford to ignore or be ignorant about Shakespeare and his works. In fact, a true blue English teacher would consider Stratford-upon-Avon or the Globe Theatre a place of pilgrimage. And maybe we are dealing with an endangered species here. This fact is brought home emphatically when one deals with English teachers who say “poetries” or “return back”, and this when handling a generation of pupils only interested in science and technology. How then does a teacher make English, and Shakespeare in particular, interesting to students?
In my opinion, Shakespeare was not just a playwright/dramatist or a poet – he was all that but much more. I would call him a timeless philosopher who also wrote plays and poetry. So his relevance lies beyond the literature itself.
Coming to the actual classroom teaching, when does one introduce Shakespeare?
The author is an educationist who has taught at primary, secondary, and higher secondary levels. She is the principal of St.Gregorios High School, Mumbai, and was recently given the National Award for Teachers and Principals by the Government of India. She can be reached at jinikay@gmail.com