Garth George: Alas, poor Shakespeare, I knew him

It's a damn shame that those who administer what passes for our education system these days have decided to pretty much do away with the study of Shakespeare.

Next year, changes to the level 3 English component of the ridiculous NCEA, which asks students to do a critique of a Shakespearean play, will expire and not be replaced.

It is the last Shakespeare-specific unit in the curriculum and its demise will mean that studying the Bard will be entirely up to individual teachers.

Not much hope for him, then, since I suspect that one of the reasons for this is that far too many English teachers today are simply incapable of interpreting him to their students.

Teachers, however, who are never prepared to admit to any incompetence, are blaming the students.

One head of English at an Auckland high school says students have been ignoring study of Shakespeare.

He reckons it was inevitable, and I suppose it is. In today's dumbed-down ways of teaching and learning, I guess Shakespeare is just too difficult.

I was never a great fan of him in my schooldays.

I learned what I had to of the man my generation of schoolboys - and no doubt some before and since - referred to as Bill Rattledagger.

But, strangely enough, even today, some 55 years later, I can recite without thinking at least the beginnings of a couple of Hamlet's soliloquies and Marc Anthony's eulogy at the grave of Caesar: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones ..."

But I wonder if today's educationists and students appreciate just how profoundly the Bard influenced the way we express ourselves even today.

We might say of Shakespeare's writing that "it was Greek to me" or "there's method in his madness" or "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and that's "the short and the long of it". We might even "give the devil his due".

We might agree with the paraphrase that "a friend in need is a friend indeed", that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and that we "have seen better days".

We may have discovered that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and that "all that glisters is not gold".

We soon learn that "What's done is done" and on that we'll "not budge an inch", that sometimes we must "be cruel to be kind" and that can be "the unkindest cut of all". We might concede that "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players".

We might venture "once more into the breach, dear friends" to find that "the quality of mercy is not strained", that "love is blind" but all will be well if we are "true to ourselves".

We might discover that "brevity is the soul of wit", that "honesty is the best policy", that "the course of true love never did run smooth" even if we are "birds of a feather" or "wear my heart upon my sleeve" which is the "stuff as dreams are made of".

I might sit down to "a dish fit for the gods" while enjoying my "salad days" and proclaim that "the world's my oyster", that "all's well that ends well" and "I lead a charmed life", even if only "in my mind's eye".

And so it goes on. Shakespeare's contribution to our language has been stupendous.

What a shame his immortality is about to diminish.