Why we are failing children by driving Shakespeare out of Scotland's schools

“Perfect in detail… and completely absorbing in the powerful arc of its storytelling.” So said The Scotsman’s theatre critic Joyce McMillan in her five-star review of Arin Arbus’s production of The Merchant Of Venice earlier this month.

Having seen the play, staged by New York’s Theatre For A New Audience at the Lyceum in Edinburgh, I wholeheartedly agree. And so would the rest of the packed theatre, judging by the applause for the cast after William Shakespeare’s engrossing tale of love, loyalty, prejudice and capitalism.

Many seats were taken by people in their 20s or 30s who, like the rest of us, may have been introduced to Shakespeare at school. But changes introduced recently by the SNP government to its much-maligned “curriculum for excellence” mean fewer children will enjoy this privilege.

John Douglas Thompson playing Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice | Henry Grossman

Children want modern, diverse texts

The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has told teachers they can drop the Bard of Avon in favour of Scottish writers. The SQA has published its new list of Scottish set texts for National Five and Higher English courses, based on 2,500 responses to an “extensive” consultation of teachers and pupils.

Robert Quinn, the authority’s head of English, languages and business, said: “Teachers and lecturers wanted to retain the most popular texts, but they also wanted a list that is diverse, and relevant for learners. They wanted us to include more writers of colour, more female writers, more LGBTQ+ writers, and writers from a variety of backgrounds.

“From learners we heard them say they wanted to see more modern and diverse texts that had challenging themes and strong emotional content included in the revised list.”

Award-winning fiction

This list now includes less familiar names alongside the likes of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Carol Ann Duffy and John Byrne. One addition is Ely Percy, whose novel Duck Feet won the 2021 Saltire Society’s Scottish fiction book of the year award. The book is written in the vernacular of Percy’s native Renfrewshire and follows teenager Kirsty Campbell through school.

Another new work is a translation of the 2015 Gaelic language play Sequamur by Donald S Murray, which portrays a headmaster’s grief after he encouraged his pupils to fight in the First World War. Other writers include David Greig, Alan Spence, Jenni Fagan, Norman MacCaig, Liz Lochhead, Imtiaz Dharker and George Mackay Brown.

There is nothing wrong with any of this, of course, except that there is no longer a requirement for pupils to study texts by non-Scots. Instead, it is up to teachers and schools to decide whether to introduce pupils to plays such as Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. Most will probably choose not to.

Scottish children are now unlikely to be introduced to characters such as Hamlet at school | AFP via Getty Images

Little room for non-Scots

One English teacher and Shakespeare fan, Derek Huffman of Berwickshire High School in Duns, in the Borders, told the Sunday Times: “The requirement to teach up to six individual Scottish texts thoroughly reduces the amount of time we have to properly explore other things.” It has, he said, “become more straightforward to stick to Scottish set texts”.

“With limited time and resources, and with students’ success in mind, it is the path of least resistance,” Mr Huffman said.

Is there no room for even one non-Scot? To paraphrase Shylock, the Jewish moneylender of The Merchant Of Venice, powerfully performed at the Lyceum by John Douglas Thompson: “Hath not an Englishman eyes?... If you prick us do we not bleed?”

Why is it deemed so important that Shakespeare did not strut and fret his hour upon the stage on precisely the same patch of land as us? Would it make a difference if, by some miracle of science, it emerged he had a great-grandmother from Fife?

Not only was the Bard a Sassenach, he scores low in the diversity stakes. He is male, pale and very stale indeed, having died more than 400 years ago.

William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, wrote 39 plays and 154 sonnets | Getty Images

Shakespeare’s own views unknown

But the fact we know so little about him through the mists of time only adds to his enduring appeal. It is remarkable that, despite 39 plays and 154 sonnets, no one really knows what he thought about anything.

What would he make of the current conflict in the Middle East, for example, or the debate over assisted suicide, or ITV’s Love Island? We study him for clues and are enriched in the process.

Clearly, the fact that he was English and that he ticks all the wrong DEI boxes has not helped Shakespeare keep his place in our classrooms. But there might be more to it.

Recent studies have shown Scotland slipping down the international league tables on literacy. Perhaps increasing numbers of students are simply not equipped to get to grips with Shakespeare. And this, maybe, is another reason why it might seem to make sense to replace him with more “accessible” and “relatable” writers.

If so, we are depriving children of the greatest writing in the Anglosphere based on the belief that it is beyond them. Shakespeare can appear daunting at first but the reward is more than worth the effort. He is as relevant today as he always was and will always be. He transcends continents and centuries.

The soft bigotry of low expectations

He is believed to have invented 1,700 words and phrases we still use today, often unknowingly. The title of one of the short stories on the SQA’s list of set texts – All That Glisters, by Anne Donovan – is from The Merchant Of Venice. Yet Scottish children are now less likely to have even heard of Shylock or Shakespeare’s hundreds of other characters when they leave school.

Some would describe this as the soft bigotry of low expectations. Others might call it “dumbing down” – a phrase that brings the education blob out in hives. The attainment gap between poor and better-off pupils will continue to grow, as it did this week, while standards are kept low and we make excuses for academic shortcomings in schools.

We should not pretend we are doing children any favours by ignoring the greatest writer in the English language.