The document discusses the need to modernize how literary texts like Shakespeare are taught in schools. It argues that texts should not be taught in isolation but adapted to contemporary culture through collaborative projects and new media technologies. This allows students to understand themes physically and creatively, not just academically, enhancing their skills. Workshops exploring Romeo and Juliet through drama, filmmaking and relating it to modern society found students better understood themes and gained confidence with Shakespeare and technologies. The internet is changing how people create and perceive the world, making education more focused on skills like problem solving, communication and innovation.

1. The necessity of modern
media in the teaching of
Shakespeare and World
Literature in schools

2. Current problems in arts education:
• Literary texts are taught in isolation. This advocates the view
of texts as ‘sources’, not as ‘adaptations’ which can be
flexibly applied to the contemporary.
• Arts in general are not taught in a way which utilises a range of
cognitive modes of learning. This marginalises the number
of students who can access arts.
• Not adapted to be in tune with the way the modern
generation think, which is undergoing a drastic change
compared to the way a generation growing up pre the advent
of the internet think.

3. ‘the immediate source of its own truth […] to cite the
canonical metaphor, the imagination ceases to
function as a mirror reflecting some external reality
and becomes a lamp which projects its own internally
generated light onto things.’

4. Literature students must be allowed the following:
• understanding of how the text can be adapted and applied to
their contemporary culture
• collaborative adaptation of the text for the creation of meaning
• the opportunity to use their creativity
• experimentation with understanding the text physically,
visually and vocally as well as the traditional academic way
• the use of new media technologies to facilitate the above, in
order to enhance their capacity for creativity and confidence with
these technologies, and by extension the texts

5. 83% of students said that workshops developed
their understanding of Romeo & Juliet more than
their regular English lessons

6. Responses from Chorlton students:
‘[…] because we explored it in a different way.’
‘It was funny and interesting. This is because it was a different way of
learning the storyline.’
‘I enjoyed watching other people’s performances. I also enjoyed
interacting with others.’
‘I enjoyed exploring how society today is still quite similar.’
‘I liked learning about how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet linked/ was
relevant to our day now’

7. ‘the lines [become] secondary which is a
very freeing thing [because] when the
lines aren’t the paramount thing in the
front of your mind they take on […] a
deeper meaning’

8. ‘I liked the lessons because it was more enjoyable than sitting in a
classroom. My brain was more active in the drama room.’
‘I liked the bit where we made our own drama performances
because it was good how we got to recognise more about the
fight scene.’

9. The concept of a "Gutenberg Parenthesis" […] offers a means of
identifying and understanding the period [in which Gutenberg
operated], varying between societies and subcultures, during which
the mediation of texts through time and across space was dominated
by powerful permutations of letters, print, pages and books. Our
current transitional experience toward a post-print media world
dominated by digital technology and the internet can be usefully
juxtaposed with that of the period -- Shakespeare's -- when England
was making the transition into the parenthesis from a world of scribal
transmission and oral performance.
Thomas Pettitt and Peter Donaldson, The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Oral Tradition and
Digital Technologies

10. ‘How is the internet changing the way you create?
[…] The Gutenberg Parenthesis answer would
be “it’s making me a bit more like Shakespeare”’
‘The internet will make us less categorical in the
way we perceive the world’
1440s 1980s

11. ‘yes [the workshops have given me more confidence with
Shakespeare] because I have a clear idea of how he writes’
‘Yes it did [explain the themes of the play] thoroughly it was great
fun. I enjoyed seeing how they translated it to films.’
‘I liked the idea that we got to come up with our own
modernised version and film it’
‘[…] it was interesting and fun and let me be a bit more creative
than usual.’
‘I enjoyed the independence we were given when filming’

12. ‘the media are routinely seen as an anti-educational
influence, as the deadly enemy of literacy, of morality, of
art and culture’ – David Buckingham
‘schools create themselves in the image of universities’ –
Sir Ken Robinson

13. The Arts in Schools: Principles,
Provision and Practice
• in developing a full variety of human intelligence
• developing the ability for creative thought and action
• in the exploration of values
• in understanding cultural change and differences

14. ‘the job market calls for computing,
communication, problem-solving and
entrepreneurial skills’
‘Education in the twenty-first century needs to
focus more sharply on the ability to
communicate, to work in teams, to think
critically, to adapt to change, to be more
innovative, creative and familiar with new
technologies.’

15. 50% of the world’s school children study Shakespeare
‘To me, Shakespeare is real life’