It’s a shame really, there are awful teachers around and literature can bring people such a lot of pleasure
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Perhaps pleasure Maree, but unless you are interested in it and consider being a thespian, it is about as useful as religious instruction.
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I don’t agree.
Whether you are analysing text from the Bible or from a play, then writing an essay on it, the skills you are learning will stand you in good stead for many jobs which involve analysis and report writing.
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No good if you are dismantling and repairing engines, or fitting a kitchen, or building a project out of wood, or flipping burgers in Macdonalds…etc. Analysis and report writing might be a job for the academic inclined person but they are not proper jobs are they. We are short of Bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and chippy’s, and how many people on the forum want to read the bible Boot…
Don’t sparkies, brickies and chippies need analysing?
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And don’t mention kitchen fitters, I’ve had it up to here. They turn up in the afternoon, saying they had an emergency callout, spend an hour on the phone, then go to lunch. They need men in white coats.
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Maybe not useful for certain trades but I was only disagreeing with your notion that
“unless you are interested in it and consider being a thespian, it is about as useful as religious instruction.”
As for not being “proper jobs”, it depends on your definition 
There are lots of jobs which require analysis and report writing and most trades / professions need the services of other trades / professions to produce the finished product - before the builders, electricians, plumbers and carpenters can get started on building and fitting out houses, they need the services of other workers to do land surveys, design the whole estate, get it all through planning, write business plans to obtain finance - all these jobs use analytical and report writing skills.
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Is education only a process of preparation for a life of work? If more bricklayers and plumbers could quote Shakespeare there might be less elitism throughout our class system, and that would be long overdue. Not that I personally appreciate the value of Shakespeare; I find it tedious and uninteresting, but I have to accept that that is probably because of my own lack of education. 
Yes Boot, but we are top heavy with those kinds of academics and there is nobody that actually wants to get their hands dirty and do the work.thank God for the Polish!
Perhaps it should be Harbal. All the young people nowadays seem to be overwhelmed by education and don’t know what to do with it when they have got it. Do you need all that education to protest, pull down statues and then end up driving an Amazon van.
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Yes, but this discussion developed from a conversation about Shakespeare and teaching literature in schools - where kids all have the same curriculum in the early years and literature is only a small part of it.
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If he didn’t play for one of the local football teams, nobody in our school would even know who Shakespeare was… 
And I’m sure that nobody could spell coriculam…
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Then you obviously went to the wrong school. 
Not my choice unfortunately RightNow. In those days you went to the nearest. I was lucky to get out alive…
Wasn’t it Dame Edith Evans?
nah vera lyn - sang lovely in it too!
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Nah, Dame Edna! Hello Possums!..
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Might depend on what somone thinks education is. Sometimes it can be quite helpful if you go by this definition:
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything, without losing your temper or self-confidence. Robert Frost
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Dame Edith played Lady B in the film version if memory serves. Dame Margaret played her in a TV adaptation.
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Ah - not having a TV - I missed that one - I bet she was good. Thank you.