The History Boys: A Play by Alan Bennett
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Book Reviews of The History Boys: A Play
Book Review: Whither education?
Summary: 4 Stars
The History Boys is a fascinating if flawed play about history teaching and the value of education in schools and society. Set in a dated grammar school with an Oxbridge scholarship class of bright boistrous boys cramming for places at Britain's elite universities, it uncovers many shibboleths of old fashioned educational piety.
A results obsessed headmaster, despairing of his general studies teacher Hector ploughing his very unique educational furrow consisting of classic poetry and groping of boys genitals, hires the young Turk Irwin to galvanise his young 6th form charges into Oxbridge material. Irwin whips the boys into exam technique shape using the maverick 'turn established wisdom on its head' essay school where counter-intuitive ideas and generalised themes trump steadily learned facts as the key to impress the examiners.
I am a history teacher myself and was fascinated by the multi layered themes of the play. A debate about history education first up. Bennett reveals in his introduction that he despairs of certain contemporary TV dons (Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts primarily) who have made a lucrative career from applecart upsetting history. Valuing shock over 'romantic truth'. But Bennett's diagnosis here is misleading. By voicing this school of history with the unsympathetic Irwin: 'who cares about truth?', he does rough justice to a school of history which is determined to challenge the assumptions of the past in order to arrive at a clear, rigorously argued version of human doings rather than passively accept hackneyed old truths, which, given the truth of the past is so notoriously difficult to arrive at, might not be so true anyway.
Secondly the play is a musing on the whole value of education. The end (and this is more pointed in the film version) reveals the boys all make their primary goal - a place at Oxford or Cambridge. But then what? As Ms Lintott, the boys' third teacher, a quiet calm plodder of the old school remarks, they are pillars of an establishment with no place for pillars. In Britain's current era of post-imperial decline, what use is being well educated when the pillars of our society are philistinistic ego-maniacs like Alan Sugar, Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan. The 'well rounded individual' is increasingly pushed to the margins - to eke out a non-descript existince in one of our diminishing universities, or schools, or become a crabbed and bitter newspaper columnist carping from the sidelines.
The play's tone is one of melancholy, though the the balance is upset by too much slathering on of one of Alan Bennett's erstwhile themes - young boys and homosexuality. There is much to ponder here about a way of life and education that has passed. It is hard to argue against the contention that what has succeeded it represents a significant epoch of cultural decline.
Book Review: Words of Wisdom
Summary: 4 Stars
According to an ancient Chinese proverb, the route to wisdom starts when you select words with the proper meaning. Alan Bennett's The History Boys is all about the use of words. The situation is a classroom filled with working class boys all of whom want to break with tradition and pass entry tests that will make them some of the first non-Elites to ever get into Oxbridge---for the uninitiated that's short for Oxford or Cambridge. Even for the best of them, chances are slim. First, there's the little matter of class; at Oxbridge, students and faculty are either highbred or rich, mostly both; a working class resident is most likely to be there as janitor or cook. Then there's the matter of competition; only the best of the best need apply; there are many more applicants than slots. Not to be deterred, the ambitious school administrators have a plan: Use two very different types of tutors. One gives the boys facts, figures, poems, stories, and an appreciation of culture. The other gives them something seemingly more valuable: presentation skills. Together, the teachers hone students who know how to choose words that surprise, stir emotions, and impress. The strategy works, sort of. Through the benefit of hindsight, we learn that the boys do get into Oxbridge; but, Bennett also lets you know that he knows the difference between a "proper" schoolboy who can carefully mouth words to impress and the wise man who makes an impression by choosing his words properly.Book Review: Did I miss the sub-text?
Summary: 4 Stars
'The History Boys' play was obviously written before the follow-up film and film script, as the play has been edited ruthlessly for the film. Although the play was a resounding success, the film rather flopped at the box office.
There is a telling Introduction in this book when Alan Bennett expands on his own school years.
However, it is difficult to grasp that we are in the early eighties, as some of the General Studies taught to his class by the knowledgeable teacher, Hector, seem more suited to a play in the early sixties, as there are references to the films 'Brief Encounter' and 'Now Voyager' etc. Furthermore, Hector's motor-bike from which he ultimately crashes and dies has a very old number plate. I know he is supposed to be a teacher of his times but his motor-bike must have been at least thirty years old and barely roadworthy. Or perhaps that was the point and I missed it. An interesting read but dated.
Book Review: education vs. learning--poignant
Summary: 4 Stars
Through the characters of the 4 teachers (Hector, Irwin, Dorothy and the headmaster), the author presents interesting and relevant questions about the purpose of learning vs.functions/applications of education, and about the place of true philosophy in its original meaning (love of wisdom) in the industrial and competitive societies. It is such a poignant book, particularly in our American educational system where everything is attached with adollar sign, and selections of institutions and educational materials are potential investments not only for students but also some of the schools to which names of prestigious colleges are their marketing products. The sexuality (and homosexuality) in the play is obviously a relavant developmental subject, however,I felt that it was presented rather disjointed ways, even perhaps, subtlely self-serving to the author rather than to the story.Book Review: Maybe a Great Play...but a Medicore Reading Experience
Summary: 3 Stars
Alan Bennett's Tony Award-winning play The History Boys may make for compelling theatre, but as text on a page, it's as dry as the formal education the title characters are rebelling against.
The story follows a group of eight seniors who come from a school that generally cranks out competent if not stellar students who all generally to go on to respectable but not stellar colleges. However, this crop of boys shows exception promise, so a hotshot history tutor is brought in to prepare them for the exams that could get them into Oxford. The newcomer's iconoclastic teaching approach brings him into conflict with Hector, an eccentric, old-guard English teacher who is at once both inspiring and repulsive. (Hector likes to give his students a ride on his motorbike, copping feels as often as he can. His students, for their part, consider it par for the course.)
Hector comes from the Robin Williams/Dead Poets Society mold of inspirational teacher. He is larger than life, charismatic, and affected, and one can't help thinking he's an incredibly vital person. He aims not to give students knowledge but the ability to think and feel freely. "You give them an education," he tells a colleague. "I give them the wherewithal to resist it."
For one entire scene, Hector--the English teacher--teaches in French (a rather unfortunate problem for any reader who doesn't read the language). Such affectations helped Richard Griffiths act his way to a Best Actor award--but they lack charm on the page and actually get tedious at times.
Bennett also has eight young men to juggle. They become almost impossible to tell apart in the script. Although they are pictured on the cover of the script, there's nothing to say who is who; a quick little caption for reference would've gone a long way toward putting faces to names, which could've clarified the reading experience.
There's the usual coming-of-age stuff worked in, including lots of talk about sexuality. Some of it may push the boundaries of taste, not to mention plausability.
In the end, The History Boys didn't move me. I didn't cheer for the boys as they took their tests. I didn't feel bad--for any reason at all--when Hector gets confronted about his groping. I didn't feel especially enriched or enlightened by whatever message Bennett was trying to pass along. The History Boys was, like the definition of history itself offered by one of the boys, "one f***-ing thing after another"--and not anything more.