Senior Moments: We are all Hamlet

My senior classes are just beginning to read Hamlet.

The play opens with Barnardo demands to know, "Who's there?"

It is a question Hamlet will spend the whole play trying to answer.

This morning, I asked my seniors in class to make a list of all the different ways they could answer this question (son, daughter, athlete, and so on). After they jotted for a few minutes, I said, "Okay, so that is what you are at this point." I paused, then asked my thirty wonderful seniors if any one of them was willing to claim with genuine confidence that they knew who they were at this point.

Not a hand went up.

So, as with Hamlet, though we hope with a lot less trauma, they will spend much of their remaining time attempting to answer it.

When I asked how they will arrive at that answer, Jesus V. said that they must each test themselves, for it is only through finding our limits that we discover the answers to such questions as life and literature pose.

Many in their later senior years, of course, lose sight or sense of who they are--or who we are to them: many of our friends now care for parents that no longer know their own name let alone the names of their children or grandchildren.

In another of Shakespeare's plays, Romeo says, "Oh teach me how I should forget to think." Our students read Romeo as freshmen, a time when they rarely seem to need to be taught not to think since our most common refrain as parents is inevitably, "What were you thinking?" (Answer: "I guess I wasn't.")

As seniors, only four years older, our students read the story of the young prince Hamlet, who shows us at every turn what it is to think about who we are so that we may, as Polonius counsels his son Laertes, "above all to [our] ownself be true."

Comments

[Patty Anixter]

Steve Jobs echoed Polonius when he said. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. "

Jim, thanks for your thoughtful and heartfelt type pad blog. I have my feet in both 'senior' worlds, also. Although, Harrison is in his Jr year, now studying in South America...stil loving learning. I remember your assignment to write letters of advice, sweet memories

[Evelyn]

"above all to [our] ownself be true." Good thing for even adults to be reminded of from time to time! Love that you're making them think!

[Danielle6849]

I spend a lot of time with my Seniors thinking about self-concept also. We revolve it around personal philosophy. We begin with an "I Believe" essay for the NPR project. Sometimes for a final on a unit, I have them choose a character and write an "I Believe" essay in their words. It is a World Lit. class, so we look at Greek Philosophy and Existentialism (among others) through the literature we read. It is my favorite course to teach, and you are right, it does take them a long time to put into words their personal belief system.