Equality in the Classroom : A Norm Critical Approach to Teaching Democratic Values Using Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew

The curriculum for upper secondary school clearly states that every school is obliged to ensure that teaching centres on and implements democratic values in order to prevent discrimination (Skolverket, 2013). How to do this however, is up to the local school to decide. Norm-critical pedagogy shows that in order to inculcate democratic values in education, the individual teacher must design the teaching material so that it focuses on such values (Bromseth & Darj, 2010). The purpose of this study, and the aim of this essay, is to investigate how democratic values can be implemented in classroom practice using Shakespeare’s The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of The Shrew. English classes in the courses English 5 and English 6 were asked to read extracts from each of the plays, and then evaluate the play of choice in terms of the socio-political reality of the late Renaissance portrayed in the extracts, through the prism of today’s democratic values. The pupils were assisted in the task by having close-reading questions to answer, and later a smaller written assessment in form of a blog-entry, in order to help develop their thinking. The results of the study show that the pupils were perfectly able to evaluate and discuss values and practices such as equality, racism or sexism based on their reading. From a norm-pedagogical approach to teaching, it therefore seem that Shakespeare’s The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of The Shrew can be utilised as teaching material in order to help foster the development of democratic values, and discussions around the same, into the classroom.