There's a recent push back against teaching Shakespeare because he's an old, white man. It's hard to ask me opinions about the English curriculum because fiction is not really my thing, but I do have to say this: English was historically a white man's language, and for most of its existence the literature was dominated by white men, mostly because women were not usually literate and it was almost entirely white people speaking it. Yeah, there are really good pieces of work out there by women and non-whites that are undoubtedly ignored, but that doesn't mean the majority of literature is shit just because women and minorities didn't participate in it.

Returning to Shakespeare, if you were reading my xanga back in the day, you would easily know I'm no big fan, but I still would give props to him for his writing. It's problematic reading him though because he's meant to be staged, but I wouldn't say those who have memorized his monologues have done it for naught; they're quite impressive metaphorically, metrically, and stylistically. Even without that, he has a large impact on our cultural memory whether you like it or not. Here's a question: Have you ever heard of Zenobia? She was a queen from the 200s whose kingdom was around modern-day Syria. I never heard of her either until my 20s, but I definitely have heard of Cleopatra. I could tell you huge details about her life: meeting Caesar in the rug, the suicide with the asp, the luxurious life she had. Many scholars think the reason why Cleopatra was well known and not Zenobia is simply because Shakespeare didn't write a play about the latter. That's that.

Besides adding a shit ton of words to the English language, Shakespeare also influenced many writers like Dickens or Melville and even left the English language to affect the continent. Much of the Sturm und Drang movement loved him. Hell, he's even known outside of Europe; my first contact with Romeo and Juliet was through Ranma.

One of the problems with English class, and why I was never attracted to it, is it's a very subjective topic, and many teachers have to decide what to teach. A book about a man who's running out of time as he ages like The Great Gatsby probably won't move a classroom of teenagers. But conversely, what the hell would teenagers want to read? As a teacher, would you want to assign Twilight? Hell, back in high school the only "literature" I wanted to read was pornographic fanfiction. That's not really great either. A balance probably should be struck; something that touches the students personally, but doesn't reject the foundations that the language and literature has been based upon because you're losing out otherwise. Some books are from the classics, and some are more modern perhaps.