The week my pupils took me to Hades and back

Ancient myth and bleak modern reality collide to teach an old head a valuable lesson about the young
14th July 2017, 12:00am

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The week my pupils took me to Hades and back

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/week-my-pupils-took-me-hades-and-back

I should know by now. I’ve been a teacher for 39 years and a head for 27. There I was last month, pondering in my online Tes column how we teachers should try to make sense of an unjust and troubled world for our pupils. What I underestimated was the way in which they often do so quite well without us.

At my school last week, I witnessed a pair of inspiring short plays: a Year 10 GCSE drama set performed two exam pieces, 20-minute works each devised,written and performed by five actors. Both cleverly reinterpreted ancient legends: the Classical setting of Hades brought in Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice, the river Styx and Cerberus, while George and the Dragon saw a lone warrior seeking his dragon to slay. Both tales were revisited in light of modern Syria, so-called Islamic State, inept international intervention and the refugee crisis. The young casts wove together ancient myth and bleak modern reality with great skill.

Much has been said and written recently about anger among young people; clearly, Jeremy Corbyn’s revived Labour Party has tapped into that. The passion of these young actors was as clear as their interpretations communicated their personal anguish, both at the suffering they see in the Middle East and their inability to do anything about it.

At the end, all of us in the audience felt shaken by the vivid power of what we had witnessed. That’s what the best art should do: move and stir. What was astonishing was the fact that it was 15-year-olds who created that effect, writing and performing work that stemmed from deeply felt feelings.

Recently, I read about a Year 8 Gloucestershire pupil who made his own personal and highly effective contribution to charity WaterAid. Henry Garrard of Wycliffe Preparatory School decided to use just 20 litres of water a day for three days, the quantity most people in Africa get by on. Moreover, he walked 3km to collect it from a spring - the average African distance. The water he was carrying was half his bodyweight, so on the third day he borrowed his dad’s wheelbarrow.

Next he boiled the water on a camping stove, which he also used to cook his food. At the end of each day, only a dribble of water was left for washing. He learnt a lot and raised £540 (you can support him at bit.ly/20Litre).

If such students use original approaches to make sense of the world, others just get on with facing big challenges. I can name one of my students because she is in the public domain.

A couple of weeks ago, Kate Waugh sat an A level English literature exam early (with the exam board’s permission), so that she could dash to the airport and fly to Germany for a competition the same day. She arrived a bit late, but still returned home as European U20 triathlon champion!

There’s a moral here: give young people the skills and techniques to create, and we adults will frequently be amazed by what they produce. They might prove far more imaginative and effective in tackling the world’s ills than my generation has been.

Dr Bernard Trafford is headteacher of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne. The views expressed here are personal

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