How Teachers Are Teaching Shakespeare in Shaking Desert ?

Nouakchott City - Mauritania . Seyid .O. Seyid. The world has studied Shakespeare and his language culture extensively without giving him due deserved consideration. Locally, even Shakespeare passing on stage may not be perceived. With overloaded challenges of cultural shocks and contradictions of educational systems, Mauritanian English teachers are facing a killing music in Mauritanian schools.

English credits in high schools are only five hours to deliver in a class of almost different generations. Typical public mixed class is open to more than hundred students of multi-ethnic groups. The first 15 minutes of the class hour are devoted to the practice of being an iron baby sister with snowy mind and rocky heart. The teacher has to use all tricks of class management for his next 30 minutes chalk and talk dancing where he has to write the day lesson on the black board that is not black any more. Irrational usage of another generation had made it colorless and shapeless. Shouting he will be in another round to explain every word by acting, drawing or finally translating it into local languages if the top learners do not figure out the intended meaning.

The students are to copy their teacher unsacred scripts in drowsy copybooks during the last quarter of that century teaching hour. In the meantime, the teacher goes in the rows of dusty tables to supervise general behavior. Only the best ones used to write down their lessons while the troubles makers curse the universe to end this monkey business of hated supervision. Unexpectedly, the very loud alarming bell does announce the end of the English course that is yet to begin. The teacher is likely to repeat the same play with different class players for six hours, before closing the day business of no business. The players may change but the game or the battle of teaching will never change if he is lucky to survive without registering major accident in the class or the schoolyard.

Crowded beginning classes are the worst turning their teachers into the peak of laughing fools whenever they uttered a single strange word of Shakespeare foreign language in this Arab African desert. The land obsessed by Arab heritage in conflicting competition with a culture of historical French colonialism. Despite various attempts of Arabization and many enacted laws claiming Arabic as official lingua franca, Moliere language is the winner in public administrative spheres dominating usage at least. The teachers were used to enjoy the highest esteem of prophetic position as expressed in poetic compositions of certain Arab poets. Yesterday teachers have mastered the public schools. Today, they are serving private schools. In future, they might be disturbed by their fears of uncertain destiny. The fragile emotional ones may even dropping tears on losing glorious past for wearied reasons. The brave teachers will die hard teaching as long as they are surviving the calamities of their notable profession.

Therefore, it is a dramatic action to teach Shakespeare global language in the shaking ground of the desertification capital. Despite all the odds of the impossible mission, teaching was, is, will always be the most efficient working tool of the brightest teachers to change the world tremendously in every positive direction by educating any uneducated nation of no established education.

As the wise quote goes, “Who dares to teach should never cease to learn”. You can learn more by teaching surely. That is why teaching ourselves is a never-ending process. Islamic tradition is calling us to learn forever, even in China, from birth to death.