We faced a similar issue at the NEA twenty years ago when we launched our national Shakespeare program. Many states were dropping Shakespeare from the high school curriculum--citing how difficult and irrelevant the plays were.
We proceeded any way. We eventually brought several million teenagers into live performances, often the first professional "spoken" play they had ever seen. Kids from every sort of background loved the experience. Teachers wrote to us that the best classes of their careers were in the days following the performance.
In the meantime we gave thousands of actors and crew well-paid work, and we helped support regional theaters in their work.
Now this I can get behind. Saw Henry V recently. Awesome play about politics and war. And because it is awesome, it is relevant. Seeing Romeo & Juliet in a couple of months.
Are there any decent adaptions of Faust out there?
And arguably they should not be read. No one read Shakespeare’s works in Shakespeare’s day. They watched them. Sitting down and discussing Henry V as a text is highly anachronistic.
Hmmm. One question I don’t know the answer to is what % of the population would have read Shakespeare’s plays in his lifetime vs seen them.
- The majority (80%???) of the English population were illiterate in 1616.
- The quartos would have had print runs of hundreds. The First Folio was around 750 copies. In comparison, the Globe could hold 3000 people for a single performance.
So “no one” is an exaggeration but Shakespeare’s work would have been encountered far more frequently in performance than in text.
“He deliberately wrote to be read” - did he? I would genuinely like a citation for that. My understanding is that none of the quartos were not published under Shakespeare’s direction and only half of his plays had been published in some form on his death.
He was plagiarised for anthologies and knew it, so his set piece speeches were written with that in mind. He was also a bestselling poet. Venus and Adonis etc. Ted Treager is the best modern book I know about these issues.
Venus and Adonis sold maybe 16,000 copies before 1640 - so a best seller for its day. But that’s still only around 6 Globe performances. Although obviously the copies would likely have been passed around. And most people today have never heard of it.
I will check out Tregear’s work. The book is $136 but the PhD thesis is free.
Coming from a science background, I feel literary folks get too hung up on relevance. 'Relevance' is just bureaucrat-speak for excitement. You just need a bit of razzle-dazzle, a dash of rizz!
(I say this as a profoundly rizzless person myself.)
The plea for „relevance“ is merely a smokescreen. Classics have an inherent relevance because reading them teaches us to perceive, think, and express ourselves precisely. Relevance doesn't come from a current topic, but indirectly, on a meta-level. Anything that empowers individuals to think independently, even when circumstances change, is relevant.
By "relevance to their lives" they mean literature that will mirror how they live and what they believe in, in a sycophantic manner, and never challenge their lifestyle, never attack their contemporary conventional wisdom, and never show them any deeper truths.
I’ll cross-reference the post of an education blogger, Curmudgucator: “Dear teacher, please don’t make your lesson relevant.” I set it to reappear in my inbox every August as I switch back into teaching mode.
Love the intensity of the painting. I feel that though I did not understand all that I read in high school, seeds were planted that later germinated. Part of my pleasure in reading is to cast my mind back to what I thought and felt about works at different points in my life. … and the joy of sinking deeper into a piece for the second and third times!
I have two comments from two very different eras of my life. When I was in college I had a professor who paraphrased Aristotle as saying that the way to control a population is to prevent them from studying anything more than the ancient Greek equivalent of business math. I wish I knew more business math, to be honest, but I think it was a good point, even if the paraphrase was inaccurate or the reference made up. You run a democracy if all anyone is capable of thinking about is relevant things. I say this as someone still pretty much in the camp of democracy. And my best friend is in finance. I have nothing against business math. But the financiers aren't going to save us.
Many years later and here I am, a relatively new father with a toddler. I would argue that my son engages almost exclusively in non relevant things and investigations. Thousands of parts of having a child have been a surprise to me, but one of the most fundamental had had to do with how central play is to developing human. Goethe is serious stuff, but its also play, and when we fail to see the relevance of its irrelevant to technical skills we cease to do the main thing a child is doing all the time, which is to become better at being himself or herself.
the title seems misleading, nowhere it say to stop reading goethe. even in the article the student continued with the following:
"the same time, he's convinced that many more students would actually like to read works by Goethe if they were given more interesting approaches to the material — but that would require wide-reaching reform of Germany's patchwork education system."
I don't agree. Any time any element of a culture is "cancelled," the culture itself is weakened. Think of Donne's metaphor in his "No Man is an Island" sermon. You can look at what is cancelled and understand the the larger motive. Those who removed the Latin Mass with its rich tradition and symbolism were removing more than the incense.
Except that Goethe is not being cancelled. It’s being suggested that he could be taught in different ways.
True cancellation is a concern, but it’s quite rare, especially in the age of the internet and social media. And when it happens, it often allows the author to post on Substack, Twitter and BlueSky, go on an extensive tour and enjoy several interviews with national media explaining why they are no longer allowed to express their views before a “renegade” publisher steps in.
The most effective method of cancellation in U.S. is rarely noticed.The Educational Testing Assn (Princeton) is the home of testing for Advanced Placement courses, a variety of achievement tests, including the SAT. It very effectively determines curriculum.
I researched & developed a program for academically gifted students at a regional private school in North Louisiana. I directed and taught English in that school-within-a-school program. And I watched the AP reading list and tests change with issues. I remember when Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," an inferior literary work, replaced a more substantial text on the recommended reading list. That year's test included a major segment devoted to a politicized Feminism. I already had "Anna Karinina" in our curriculum, but I added "The Awakening" on the summer reading list and included comparison of the two books in class discussion and writing. I watched political trends appear on tests so long for 20 years.
In a nation ignorant of its own history, the AP American history course(s) changed one year, giving short shrift to nation-formation, the federal period and even the period of territorial expansion. It picked up with slavery, moved quickly to women's rights, completely ignoring more than half the nation's history. It became anti-colonialism and grievance oriented.
Most public school and many private school teachers I've encountered are not independent thinkers. They use teacher's guides even with textbooks to explicate literary works or as source of information. So whoever writes the AP Guides has significant influence on selection of materials.
The same is true of the SAT and ACT. Student's college admission and scholarships depend heavily on their scores on these tests becaise tjeu are general predictors of college success. They have great power. And yet that power is rarely understood by those making policy.
Maybe a contrarian view, but that Pride and Prejudice lady has to start reading something else. How many other good books has she missed out on because she was reading Pride and Prejudice for the 67th time? Has she at least read Emma and Persuasion? Four times in a lifetime should be the max. I think I've read Our Mutual Friend that many times.
I had to read Goethe back and forth in school, and of course at the time I kept wondering why I had to do it. But looking back, all that analyzing and interpreting has helped me immensely later in life. It wasn’t just about understanding language and content — I also learned focus, depth, and how to follow a thought or argument through to the end instead of dropping it after three seconds and moving on to something else.
So yes, keep these books alive — and add new ones, too. Kids have plenty of time, and it won’t hurt them to get familiar with culture. And those “alte Schinken” are often much more relevant than we think. I’m currently reading Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, written in 1927, and I often find myself thinking: wow, this is still so relevant today. Highly recommend it, by the way!
In my sophomore year in high school, in our honors english class — somewhere along our way from Tale of Two Cities (paired with Burke) through Taha Hussain and Pirandello and Ecclesiastes to The Plague — one of the students *demanded* to know why we couldn’t be reading something relevant (she actually used the word) like ________ (then-current bestseller, probably as forgotten by the people who read it as the title now is to me). The response: “Go ahead. You don’t need my help for *that*.”
I fear if I were teaching and someone told me the course should be “more relevant to [their] life” I’d be inclined to respond, “But your life … it’s so very small. I’m trying to make it bigger.”
But then I’d have the same relation to Academe that I have now.
Perhaps some of the blame lies with teachers, school administrators, and politicians who have failed to make the relevance of Goethe plain to the students. As another of your commenters has remarked below, the speaker apparently continued by noting that many more students would to read works by Goethe if they were given more interesting approaches to the material — but that would require wide-reaching reform of Germany's patchwork education system.
German. 1. "general secretary of the Federal Student Conference" is a post of extreme irrelevance (as are all lower ranks of all German 'student conferences' - same for those 'parent conferences'). Usu. run by lefties/wokies, zero powers, a training ground for some wannabe-politicians. Ignored by people and most media.
2. Not that I disagree, but a) In German, 'Philister' was last used by Hermann Hesse; became 'Spießer' - nowadays, the concept is forgotten. b) In 1985 my class was forced to read a play by Heinrich von Kleist (The broken jug). Last week, I helped a girl in the library to find the text (and those booklets that will help her ace the exam about it). Much happened, nothing changed at school. That fine play was outdated since at least 1960 (a corrupt judge in an aristocratic society - written ca. 1808. Fun fact: Goethe directed the first performance: epic, oops, dramatic fail.).
German literature did not stop with Bert Brecht, just saying. Nor with Peter Weiss. So, by your logic, a teacher who discussed that play in 1830 - when the text was highly relevant and had become popular, too -or even that bestselling, scandalous 'Werther': "maybe a Philistine, but at least s.o. blind to the 'deep beauty' of Walther von der Vogelweide"
But sure: Read Goethe. Read Kleist. And Jane Austen. But preferably: with AI. - Goethe clearly saw Shakespeare as the much superior playwright. Goethe's best poems are still striking, much less so in translation (and Faust I is a poem - well, written in rhymes -, though not his best - the first pages are still fun. Faust II is not done at school.).
We faced a similar issue at the NEA twenty years ago when we launched our national Shakespeare program. Many states were dropping Shakespeare from the high school curriculum--citing how difficult and irrelevant the plays were.
We proceeded any way. We eventually brought several million teenagers into live performances, often the first professional "spoken" play they had ever seen. Kids from every sort of background loved the experience. Teachers wrote to us that the best classes of their careers were in the days following the performance.
In the meantime we gave thousands of actors and crew well-paid work, and we helped support regional theaters in their work.
I love this!
Of course! The way to teach Shakespeare is to put them on their feet and say the lines. They taste so good!
Now this I can get behind. Saw Henry V recently. Awesome play about politics and war. And because it is awesome, it is relevant. Seeing Romeo & Juliet in a couple of months.
Are there any decent adaptions of Faust out there?
They only become difficult and irrelevant when no one reads them 😎
And arguably they should not be read. No one read Shakespeare’s works in Shakespeare’s day. They watched them. Sitting down and discussing Henry V as a text is highly anachronistic.
Only absolute nerds* read scripts.
*Yes. I did. That’s me.
Nope. He was a bestseller on the page as well as the stage. He deliberately wrote to be read.
Hmmm. One question I don’t know the answer to is what % of the population would have read Shakespeare’s plays in his lifetime vs seen them.
- The majority (80%???) of the English population were illiterate in 1616.
- The quartos would have had print runs of hundreds. The First Folio was around 750 copies. In comparison, the Globe could hold 3000 people for a single performance.
So “no one” is an exaggeration but Shakespeare’s work would have been encountered far more frequently in performance than in text.
“He deliberately wrote to be read” - did he? I would genuinely like a citation for that. My understanding is that none of the quartos were not published under Shakespeare’s direction and only half of his plays had been published in some form on his death.
He was plagiarised for anthologies and knew it, so his set piece speeches were written with that in mind. He was also a bestselling poet. Venus and Adonis etc. Ted Treager is the best modern book I know about these issues.
Venus and Adonis sold maybe 16,000 copies before 1640 - so a best seller for its day. But that’s still only around 6 Globe performances. Although obviously the copies would likely have been passed around. And most people today have never heard of it.
I will check out Tregear’s work. The book is $136 but the PhD thesis is free.
God I hate relevance.
down with it!!
Coming from a science background, I feel literary folks get too hung up on relevance. 'Relevance' is just bureaucrat-speak for excitement. You just need a bit of razzle-dazzle, a dash of rizz!
(I say this as a profoundly rizzless person myself.)
Yup
💪
But also, I feel like Faust of all things is extremely relevant to AI skills...? Probably more relevant than most ICML papers will be in a few years.
EXACTY OMG
That sounds interesting, I’m still thinking about it….
It’s just a euphemism for narcissism
What a fascinating thought….
The plea for „relevance“ is merely a smokescreen. Classics have an inherent relevance because reading them teaches us to perceive, think, and express ourselves precisely. Relevance doesn't come from a current topic, but indirectly, on a meta-level. Anything that empowers individuals to think independently, even when circumstances change, is relevant.
Yes. Beautifully put, if I may say so.
Thank you!
By "relevance to their lives" they mean literature that will mirror how they live and what they believe in, in a sycophantic manner, and never challenge their lifestyle, never attack their contemporary conventional wisdom, and never show them any deeper truths.
Exactly. Relatable being its even worse little sibling.
I’ll cross-reference the post of an education blogger, Curmudgucator: “Dear teacher, please don’t make your lesson relevant.” I set it to reappear in my inbox every August as I switch back into teaching mode.
Marvellous!
You Goethe be kidding me.
Haha very good
Love the intensity of the painting. I feel that though I did not understand all that I read in high school, seeds were planted that later germinated. Part of my pleasure in reading is to cast my mind back to what I thought and felt about works at different points in my life. … and the joy of sinking deeper into a piece for the second and third times!
I saw the Marginal Revolution link and thought, that's Henry bait for sure!
lol indeed
I have two comments from two very different eras of my life. When I was in college I had a professor who paraphrased Aristotle as saying that the way to control a population is to prevent them from studying anything more than the ancient Greek equivalent of business math. I wish I knew more business math, to be honest, but I think it was a good point, even if the paraphrase was inaccurate or the reference made up. You run a democracy if all anyone is capable of thinking about is relevant things. I say this as someone still pretty much in the camp of democracy. And my best friend is in finance. I have nothing against business math. But the financiers aren't going to save us.
Many years later and here I am, a relatively new father with a toddler. I would argue that my son engages almost exclusively in non relevant things and investigations. Thousands of parts of having a child have been a surprise to me, but one of the most fundamental had had to do with how central play is to developing human. Goethe is serious stuff, but its also play, and when we fail to see the relevance of its irrelevant to technical skills we cease to do the main thing a child is doing all the time, which is to become better at being himself or herself.
Always here for your common booksense.
the title seems misleading, nowhere it say to stop reading goethe. even in the article the student continued with the following:
"the same time, he's convinced that many more students would actually like to read works by Goethe if they were given more interesting approaches to the material — but that would require wide-reaching reform of Germany's patchwork education system."
These “[X] is being cancelled” stories are almost invariably more nuanced than the headline.
I don't agree. Any time any element of a culture is "cancelled," the culture itself is weakened. Think of Donne's metaphor in his "No Man is an Island" sermon. You can look at what is cancelled and understand the the larger motive. Those who removed the Latin Mass with its rich tradition and symbolism were removing more than the incense.
Except that Goethe is not being cancelled. It’s being suggested that he could be taught in different ways.
True cancellation is a concern, but it’s quite rare, especially in the age of the internet and social media. And when it happens, it often allows the author to post on Substack, Twitter and BlueSky, go on an extensive tour and enjoy several interviews with national media explaining why they are no longer allowed to express their views before a “renegade” publisher steps in.
The most effective method of cancellation in U.S. is rarely noticed.The Educational Testing Assn (Princeton) is the home of testing for Advanced Placement courses, a variety of achievement tests, including the SAT. It very effectively determines curriculum.
I researched & developed a program for academically gifted students at a regional private school in North Louisiana. I directed and taught English in that school-within-a-school program. And I watched the AP reading list and tests change with issues. I remember when Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," an inferior literary work, replaced a more substantial text on the recommended reading list. That year's test included a major segment devoted to a politicized Feminism. I already had "Anna Karinina" in our curriculum, but I added "The Awakening" on the summer reading list and included comparison of the two books in class discussion and writing. I watched political trends appear on tests so long for 20 years.
In a nation ignorant of its own history, the AP American history course(s) changed one year, giving short shrift to nation-formation, the federal period and even the period of territorial expansion. It picked up with slavery, moved quickly to women's rights, completely ignoring more than half the nation's history. It became anti-colonialism and grievance oriented.
Most public school and many private school teachers I've encountered are not independent thinkers. They use teacher's guides even with textbooks to explicate literary works or as source of information. So whoever writes the AP Guides has significant influence on selection of materials.
The same is true of the SAT and ACT. Student's college admission and scholarships depend heavily on their scores on these tests becaise tjeu are general predictors of college success. They have great power. And yet that power is rarely understood by those making policy.
Swear me a good mouth-filling oath, Henry.
Maybe a contrarian view, but that Pride and Prejudice lady has to start reading something else. How many other good books has she missed out on because she was reading Pride and Prejudice for the 67th time? Has she at least read Emma and Persuasion? Four times in a lifetime should be the max. I think I've read Our Mutual Friend that many times.
I had to read Goethe back and forth in school, and of course at the time I kept wondering why I had to do it. But looking back, all that analyzing and interpreting has helped me immensely later in life. It wasn’t just about understanding language and content — I also learned focus, depth, and how to follow a thought or argument through to the end instead of dropping it after three seconds and moving on to something else.
So yes, keep these books alive — and add new ones, too. Kids have plenty of time, and it won’t hurt them to get familiar with culture. And those “alte Schinken” are often much more relevant than we think. I’m currently reading Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, written in 1927, and I often find myself thinking: wow, this is still so relevant today. Highly recommend it, by the way!
In my sophomore year in high school, in our honors english class — somewhere along our way from Tale of Two Cities (paired with Burke) through Taha Hussain and Pirandello and Ecclesiastes to The Plague — one of the students *demanded* to know why we couldn’t be reading something relevant (she actually used the word) like ________ (then-current bestseller, probably as forgotten by the people who read it as the title now is to me). The response: “Go ahead. You don’t need my help for *that*.”
I fear if I were teaching and someone told me the course should be “more relevant to [their] life” I’d be inclined to respond, “But your life … it’s so very small. I’m trying to make it bigger.”
But then I’d have the same relation to Academe that I have now.
Classics and the Public Sphere:
https://ricochet.com/1260883/classics-and-the-public-sphere/
If Republican politicos had taken Goethe's 'Faust' to heart, this nation would be on a much more even keel.
Perhaps some of the blame lies with teachers, school administrators, and politicians who have failed to make the relevance of Goethe plain to the students. As another of your commenters has remarked below, the speaker apparently continued by noting that many more students would to read works by Goethe if they were given more interesting approaches to the material — but that would require wide-reaching reform of Germany's patchwork education system.
German. 1. "general secretary of the Federal Student Conference" is a post of extreme irrelevance (as are all lower ranks of all German 'student conferences' - same for those 'parent conferences'). Usu. run by lefties/wokies, zero powers, a training ground for some wannabe-politicians. Ignored by people and most media.
2. Not that I disagree, but a) In German, 'Philister' was last used by Hermann Hesse; became 'Spießer' - nowadays, the concept is forgotten. b) In 1985 my class was forced to read a play by Heinrich von Kleist (The broken jug). Last week, I helped a girl in the library to find the text (and those booklets that will help her ace the exam about it). Much happened, nothing changed at school. That fine play was outdated since at least 1960 (a corrupt judge in an aristocratic society - written ca. 1808. Fun fact: Goethe directed the first performance: epic, oops, dramatic fail.).
German literature did not stop with Bert Brecht, just saying. Nor with Peter Weiss. So, by your logic, a teacher who discussed that play in 1830 - when the text was highly relevant and had become popular, too -or even that bestselling, scandalous 'Werther': "maybe a Philistine, but at least s.o. blind to the 'deep beauty' of Walther von der Vogelweide"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_von_der_Vogelweide
But sure: Read Goethe. Read Kleist. And Jane Austen. But preferably: with AI. - Goethe clearly saw Shakespeare as the much superior playwright. Goethe's best poems are still striking, much less so in translation (and Faust I is a poem - well, written in rhymes -, though not his best - the first pages are still fun. Faust II is not done at school.).