Thinking – And Learning – Like Shakespeare  

I’ve just finished reading a book titled ‘How to Think Like Shakespeare’, which I first learned of on Gelman’s statistics blog, of all places. Having mentioned it to my sweetheart, she kindly gave me a copy as a Christmas gift. It’s very interesting, not long at 170 pages, but also very dense. Lots of quotations, from ol’ Will and many others, and a lot to think about. I will surely read it at least one more time in an attempt to do it justice.

What it is really, as its author Scott Newstok writes, is an argument for adopting many of the principles that underlie the Renaissance education that Shakespeare would have received into our contemporary educational system. On the face of it, this is nuts, as Newstok admits. Up at 7am to translate Latin for 12 hours, corporal punishment, exclusion of girls – really?

Well, no, not that, but he argues that there was much in the way youngsters were educated back then that would be highly valuable to contemporary students facing a world of information overload and the looming spectre of AI. A sub-text is that these practices would be valuable to all of us.

As I note above, I cannot claim to have digested all the book’s claims and arguments, but a couple of things seem immediately very worthwhile to me. Needless to say, they are not compatible with what Newstok calls ‘…our own student-centered, present-focused, STEM-driven schools’.

Idea 1.

He notes that in Erasmus’s Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style is recommended an exercise of writing out the thought ‘Your letter has pleased me greatly’ in 15 different ways.

So –

Your letter mightily pleased me.

Your affectionate letter brought me great joy.

Your brief note refreshed my spirits

My heart was gladdened by your kind note.

And so on…..

The point Erasmus is making is that to have an abundant style, one which is both precise and a pleasure to read, it is necessary to not use the same words and phrases over and over. To avoid doing that, one must practice. The value of ‘practicing’ runs throughout the book, in fact.

The ignorance of this principle of the value in variety is an aspect of contemporary journalism which causes me no end of despair. Every so-called journalist describes things using the same ‘correct’ words and phrases. It might as well all be written by the same person (and with the advent of AI, perhaps it soon will be, sans the ‘person’).

For example, it is not currently possible for any journalist to write about anyone famous without using some form of the word ‘icon’. Jimmy Carter, Beyonce, Leadbelly and Susan Sarandon – all ‘icons’, and the things they did were ‘iconic’.

People no longer criticize or object or excoriate or castigate – they ‘call out’.

No one tells or says or declares or states or claims, they ‘share’, or if in public, ‘speak out’.

Do copy editors shut down attempts by journalists to use different phraseology, or do said journalist simply not know of any way to write beyond the most common? Either way, it is a sad situation.

Idea 2.

In all student essay writing, whatever point the essayist wishes to make, half the essay must be devoted to arguing against that same point.

Revolutionary, but the idea is not simply to induce students to see that issues always have (at least) two sides, but also to help them develop empathy. In the non-Shakespearean phrase, to ‘walk a mile in another man’s moccasins’. The ability to see things from another person’s point of view is fundamental to functioning in society. And, Newstok argues, the ability to inhabit, and to get playgoers to inhabit, the lives of other people, was Shakespeare’s greatest talent.

This development of empathy lies behind another recommendation that pervades the book. That is, that students – not to mention the rest of us – must read. Read widely, and especially read what was written by authors of the past. What they wrote is the ‘stock’ society must use to move forward, and one cannot contribute to improving that stock unless one understands what is already in it.

As I said, much to think about in this book. I’m quite sure I don’t buy everything Newstok says – ‘twould be shocking if I did. But there seems to me much of value in it. Not that anyone in the contemporary educational establishment will have any sympathy with it. I can just imagine what the so-called Teaching and Learning Centre at my former employer would think about having university students read Erasmus or Ralph Waldo Emerson, or write an essay that includes arguments against immigration, the adoption of indigenous ways of knowing or democracy or any other current piety. Acts of oppression, I expect.