Most screenwriting courses — especially those at the higher-profile film schools such as USC, UCLA, and NYU — require students to read the "Poetics", or at least, excerpt large parts of it in various summaries for their study materials.

The problem is that the "Poetics" won't really help students write better screenplays, nor is it properly understood by most writing instructors.

Aristotle was not writing a theoretical work based on logical demonstration, or logically deducing the "essence" of drama. He attempted to write a practical manual of play-construction based on what real playwrights of his day — Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides — had done to make their plays both successful as works of dramatic construction AND popular with audiences in terms of being entertaining for them.

Modern teachers of screenwriting technique, such as Robert McKee ("Story") and Irwin R. Blacker ("The Elements of Screenwriting: a Guide for Film and Television Writing") cite Aristotle's "Poetics", adding their own insights and practical methods to it.