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the history boys

Helen Parry's avatar
Posted by Helen Parry Fri, 16/07/2004 - 8:57am :: Art | more by Helen Parry

Alan Bennett's new play (at the Lyttleton Theatre, London) is about - to use Tony Blair's famous phrase - education, education, education. It is set in a northern grammar school in the 1980s. The headmaster (with a geography degree from Hull) is determined that his brightest boys should win places at Oxford or Cambridge.

The maverick sixth-form master, Hector, has a sparkling rapport with the boys, and his classes are eccentric, stimulating, eclectic, creative, poetic.

The head is concerned, however, that Hector's teaching is 'unpredictable and unquantifiable'. So, he hires for a few weeks a young teacher with the express brief to train the boys to write the kind of essays that will impress the examiners with their apparent originality.

The cynical shallowness of the one contrasts vividly with the passion of the other. Sparks fly.

The background to the plot is Margaret Thatcher's obsession with utilitarianism. The long shadows of league tables were yet to fall over our schools.

The essential question that the play asks is, 'What is education for?' Is it for the imparting of skills and qualifications that will help students to productive careers? Or is it something much less easily measured - the forming of truly rounded human beings, with wide knowledge and questioning minds?

In contemporary discussion about education, Christians seem passionately concerned about religious education, multi-faith worship and the teaching of evolution. But we do not often hear a Christian voice about the purpose and content of the whole education our children receive. Do we care about the abandonment of any sense of history - indeed of the wisdom and learning of the past; about the denigration of culture; or about the secular worldview that is so much taken for granted that it is not even discussed?

Perhaps we could do better in our churches, too. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were reminded constantly to recall the great events of their history. But many Christians today seem ignorant of the 2,000 years of the history of the Church. To say nothing of the sublime poetry and music that have so enriched our Christian heritage.

Bennett's play offers a timely lesson for us all. It's truly an education.

Helen Parry

additional resources

Details of The History Boys - which has extended its run - at the National Theatre (www.nationaltheatre.org.uk).

Review of The History Boys in the Times Educational Supplement

The Guardian's education site (www.education.guardian.co.uk)

Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner discuss The History Boys in the Daily Telegraph

The Association of Christian Teachers (www.Christian-teachers.org.uk).

GROUP WORK ideas

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Christian Education
Posted by  Anonymous on Fri, 16/07/2004 - 10:57am.
Dear Helen,

A fantastic article and very true. I have been beating this drum for 13 years now and even though I have always taught in the top private schools in the UK, I have seldom seen real education at work. And the reason is simply that it is only when we come face to face with the living God and begin to understand His purpose for Mankind that we can begin to educate the next generation of Thinkers and Workers. Pray for more Christian Teachers.
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the purpose of education?
Posted by  Ross Kendall on Fri, 16/07/2004 - 10:58am.
This Connecting with Culture reminded me of a report I heard last month about a sermon Rowan Williams gave at Oxford University.

I managed to locate the sermon online, and it's a good read for anyone who might wish to explore these concepts a bit further.

Rather than giving a simplistic evaluation of the purpose of education, such as the pragmatic (getting a job etc.) or supporting the idea of 'study for it's own sake', Dr Williams focuses on the role and importance of education in a relational society - such as equiping leaders with the tools for just governance.

Here are some quotes:

"the efforts of more than one bishop in the House of Lords lately to persuade government to include in legislation on HE(higher education) some statement about what it's for, beyond creating a more profitable workforce seem so far to have borne relatively little fruit."

"neither a narrow functionalism nor an unworldly pursuit of knowledge for its own sake"

"The reasonable society is not one in which some abstract ideal of rationality is imposed as a straitjacket on the organic life of communities"

"The best reply to the narrow functionalism and economism that so often dominate discussions of HE is not to lament the passing of an intellectual world in which the private pursuit of excellence was all-important; that world is something of a fantasy. It is to insist upon the university's role in nourishing honest and hopeful speech, for the sake of a properly reasonable culture and politics."

read more here...
www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/040620.html
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As Frank Field, the MP for Bi
Posted by  Mark Greene on Fri, 16/07/2004 - 11:36am.
As Frank Field, the MP for Birkenhead, pointed out in his very helpful book Neighbours from Hell (Politico's 2003) the question of what education is for becomes even more critical in a society where we can no longer rely on parents to pass on the key values which contribute to a shared idea of acceptable behaviour. Indeed, it is the erosion of such communally agreed values that is the root cause of the rise and rise of anti-social behaviour. Part of his solution is to introduce a GCSE in citizenship - currently it's a subject without a qualification - and make it worth two GCSEs to give it status. Here then is a Christian and an experienced politician who has spoken out on the issue, campaigned on the issue and has a range of policy proposals on the issue.
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Valuing learning for its own sake
Posted by  Ross Kendall on Fri, 16/07/2004 - 11:40am.
Bucking the trend in Australia...

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/28/1059244539816.html?oneclick=true

I found this article about "Some academics (who) are challenging the corporate principles of modern universities."
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the purpose of education
Posted by  Nick Spencer on Tue, 20/07/2004 - 4:01pm.
On the subject of the purpose of education, Robert Reich, Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University, recently delivered the 2004 Higher Education Policy Institute Lecture on the role of HE in a society. It's well worth reading (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3564531.stm).

It treats the US as a warning example of what can happen when education is submitted to the rigours of the market - in essence, it becomes a handmaid of the market. He says:

"There has been a decline… in the mission of public education. Instead of a public investment for a public return, instead of the rationale being to mobilise the most talented members of society for the good of society, for social leadership in a more complex world… the emphasis has shifted."

Instead, there are today two major objectives for education:

"One has to do with personal or family investment… higher education is thought to be a personal or family investment… not all that dissimilar from an investment in the stock market… The second… is that higher education should provide a possibility of upward mobility for talented individuals."

The result is that those goals in life that do not fit into this perspective are devalued:

"As you envision higher education as a system of private investment for private return and as that sinks into the public’s mind, it naturally follows that the concept of a liberal arts education or an education in humanities or the education in broad-based social sciences or in classics… has less and less justification in the public’s mind."

Also, for an thought-provoking essay on the purposes of education, take a look at Simon Heffer on Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, (esp. talk no. 1): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_westminster_hour/3030526.stm
Worth taking a look at the listener responses to his three talks that are also on the site.
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With love (and extra resources, group-work ideas and links...)
from www.licc.org.uk/culture.