And Hip Hop Hamlet is Evil...

Hip Hop Hamlet is evil.  At least, that's what bonkers Education Secretary Michael Gove and his cronies have been telling us at the Tory Party Conference this week.  I can't say that I'm familiar with Hip Hop Hamlet - I thought he might be some kind of rapper, until I realised that what Gove and company were going on about was the use by some teachers of hip hop idiom to teach the Shakespeare play to students.  Why is this evil?  I'm still not entirely sure, beyond the fact that, according to this bunch, it is insulting to black students.  Although one could argue that assuming hip hop is a culture confined entirely to black people is even more insulting.  I think what the Gove-ites really object to is that such an approach doesn't adhere to 'traditional' teaching methods - the learning of the play by rote without any real insight into how the text might still be relevant to modern times.  Unfortunately, such 'traditional' methods have probably been responsible for turning more students off of Shakespeare, by turning his work into a barely comprehensible chore, than anything else.

If Gove and his acolytes actually knew anything about teaching, then they would know that it is all about finding some way to engage the students, to make the subject matter relevant to their lives.  Hence Hip Hop Hamlet a perfectly legitimate way to reinterpret the play in order to make it more accessible so some groups of students.  But, in truth, Gove and his friends aren't really interested in learning.  Well, not for the masses who can't afford private education.  For Gove and his ilk, learning and the pleasure of education is only for the elite.  Schooling for the lower orders should just be about teaching them the basics that zero-hours employers will require.  Nothing more.  Which is why 'traditional' teaching methods are about putting them off of the whole concept of learning.  Besides, if the lower orders were educated, they'd know better than to vote Tory.  As if destroying the state education system isn't enough for Gove, this week he also felt compelled to wade into the controversy over the Daily Mail's decision to print scurrilous nonsense about Ed Miliband's father which would be libellous he hadn't been dead for more than fifteen years, defending the paper's right to print such stuff.  Ah, Mr Gove, what a truly unpleasant little man you are.  To paraphrase Henry II, who will rid us of this turbulent cunt?  (Bearing in mind that the NSA and GCHQ are monitoring everything,  I feel compelled to add that this is not an incitement to murder Michael Gove).