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A high school English teacher and historian of Shakespeare instruction examines the evolution in EJ of performance as a mode of teaching students to understand and appreciate the plays still so frequently taught.
In scouring the earliest editions of English Journal, one of the most fascinating details one uncovers is that the issues facing Shakespeare teachers today are similar to those issues that faced Shakespeare teachers 100 years ago. The earliest contributors to English Journal were far more in line with contemporary educational scholars than one might initially suspect, and their ideas and contributions are worth reconsideration in the context of today's pedagogical practices. For example, those early contributors were frustrated that more of Shakespeare's plays were not available to students and that the methods for presenting them leftstudents bored and uninspired. Most interesting of the parallels between past and contemporary contributors is their shared interest in teaching Shakespeare through performance.
Treating Shakespeare's plays as scripts to be performed instead of as texts to be read is familiar today, but the idea was already recorded 100 years ago. Contributors to English Journal in its first years from 1912 through 1917 argued vehemently, in fact, for pedagogical dramatization of not only Shakespeare's plays but other literary works as well. These ideas foreshadow modern performance-based approaches to teaching Shakespeare that began in the pedagogical scholarship in the 1970s, gained momentum throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and emerged recently as a central focus in two issues of English Journal dedicated to the teaching of Shakespeare: "Shakespeare in a New Age" (92.1, edited by Virginia R. Monseau in September 2002) and "Teachers Set Free: Folger Education and Other Revolutionary Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare" (99.1, guest edited by Michael LoMonico in September 2009).
Advocating for Drama in Schools
NCTE and its flagship publication, English Journal, were born amid changing perceptions of theater and drama. In colonial times, Puritan disdain for theater had kept Shakespeare from formal schooling entirely. By the 19th century, Shakespeare's plays had made their way into the curriculum, but as lines of poetry to be memorized and recited, not as parts to be performed. Negative perceptions of theater had kept it from being treated fully as an appropriate subject for study. NCTE leaders were critical in...