The winner

The lesson as performance

by John W. Cole

THERE are no rules. Every novice must learn the craft in his own, individual way. Educational theories help little. They simply confuse. They try to offer answers before you have asked the questions, perhaps before you know what the ques- tions are. They equip you to paint the house and you arrive to find it needs re-wiring. Teaching is a question of style and style is something which every teacher must discover for himself. It cannot be taught, only learned. But teaching English offers special prob- lems. Though individual style remains im- portant, not any style will do. Maths, geography, history, for example, one can imagine being taught I quite adequately in a formal manner. Not ideal, perhaps, but effective. With English, it simply isn't so. For though, like maths, it has exam success required of it and is effectively compulsory to the age of 16, it also has imaginative, creative and recreational dimensions which demand fulfilment, so that, like art, music or games, to be successful, it must be enjoyed. Appreciation of a poem cannot be acquired simply by learning certain `facts' about its composition. As far as is compatible with its other responsibilities, English must be fun. For this, the basic requirement must be a relaxed and harmo- nious atmosphere in the classroom, a willing partnership between teacher and children of the kind that exists between audience and performer in a theatre. There isn't a child alive who isn't fascinated by a live performance. Children quite naturally and instinctively love theatre. They love it because it is exciting and vivid, energetic and unpredictable, immediate, spectacular and alive. For me, these are also the great qualities of the English lesson since it, too, is a performance.

In general, teachers have a natural de- sire for friendship, honest sincerity and plain dealing in their relationships with Pupils. Children often feel differently, re- senting 'sincere' attempts at friendship which they recognise as impossible in the artificial arena of the classroom. What I am suggesting is certainly artifice. It is even a kind of deceit and cunning because it employs all the trickery and prestidigita- tion of the actor's craft: exaggerated post- uring, manipulation of the voice, simulated emotion, the calculated surprise. There are moments to rant and moments to whisper, to employ the studied pause, the heavy silence. The teacher who has all the natural ease and confidence of the actor has little trouble handling children, for it is insecur- ity which they are quick to sense and to exploit. They provoke if they know they can gain a desired response. They lack the sophistication to change tactics if they encounter the unexpected, mock horror or anger, self-depreciation, grotesque self- abasement, ironic humility.

For the adult, exciting performances are rare. Age withers, custom stales their limited variety. But the young mind has an openness, a freshness and a receptivity that makes it easy to be wooed by art. It is an exhilarating moment when the audience is won and held firmly in the hand. The possibilities seem boundless. You know you have the power to fire the imagination, so with novel, play or poem you strive to create a vibrant atmosphere, bold pictures, vivid colours. You describe, perhaps, a black and starless night, a sleeping king, a jagged rampart where a lone figure walks, a dagger scorching in his mind. Instantly, you are at Dunsinane the night of Dun- can's murder. Constantly, you seek spon- taneity. You extemporise and, though your words are dull, you are amazed by how they are transformed when given with drama, verve and graphic detail, whether describing the hot afternoon in Verona as Tybalt and Mercutio fight or the tension in the Capitol the morning Caesar fell. Chil- dren love it, for they sense atmosphere and see pictures before they think in words.

But words, nevertheless, are what it is all about. For me, the English lesson is constant interplay between the vivid, the dramatic picture and its realisation through language. Writing lies at its heart; every kind of writing tried out in every kind of way. The creative writing class should not be scorned, for children, like their teachers, learn by doing.

We start, perhaps, with character. We show how it can be presented psychologi- cally and again it is the picture that comes first; a woman sits in a window, waiting for a taxi to come. Ready too early, she sits and worries. We follow, and collect around the class her circling thoughts, her observa- tion of trivial detail, and we write it down. It is a picture of anxiety and taking pictorial representations of other charac- teristics, indolence or greed or anger, the children work these into words.

Easier, perhaps, and certainly more fun, is caricature. Who better to turn to than Dickens, the master of pictorial and theat- rical characterisation? Mr Pancks, from Little Dorrit, is pictured as a busy, dirty, steaming tugboat. His character stems from his name, a combination of 'puff' and `clank'. Is it? I don't know but it's the popular view of the class. A favourite of our creation is Jenny Bouncer. Bright and colourful, she bounces like a beachball through endless sunny days. On wet days, she hides away and even she may some- times strike a flint and sadly be deflated. Quickly, in this way, you acquire a gallery of types; Miss Claire Sharp, the fragile and refined spinster, tall and elegant as a wine glass; Ada Broom, long and thin, bristling, wooden-faced and always cleaning.

Youngsters seldom think of exploring character, even in these simple ways, without some kind of guidance. Nor do they readily describe setting and land- scape, the backdrop to their stories. Time and again, focusing on detail is the answer. Isolate a scene, put it in a frame, find the words to paint the picture in all its minute, sometimes elusive detail: the factory floor, the examination room, the view from the top of the castle. Their minds try to escape, to plunge back into an orgy of easy narrative. Relentlessly, you return them to the workshop bench.

What's wrong with narrative? Nothing, except that without help children usually do it badly. Either they narrate through trivial dialogue, or they hurtle from one event to another, writing in what I always describe to them as being the 'and then . . . and then . . .' style. Like an old house, their stories need stripping down, rede- corating, filling with colour. Often we do just that. Taking one story from a class, we go into it, pause instead of racing through, look around, take stock of what the charac- ters see and feel, discuss how they should respond. Because for us it has local in- terest, the opening of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock offers a superb exercise. `Hale knew, before he had been in Bright- on three hours, that they meant to kill him.' What a gift! Mapping Hale's progress through the streets, isolating the detail of the Bank Holiday scene, expressing his growing panic, tracing the emergence of a plan for safety is like sharing the adventure itself.

Established literature is always, of course, the best material. Shelley's `Ozy- mandias' vibrates with possibilities for story-telling: . . . Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert, and character:

A shattered visage . . . whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold com- mand . . .

and in exploring scenic description what cannot one mine from Wordsworth's:

All that mighty heart is lying still.

So what do they learn? First, perhaps, that writing is not exclusive and that they, too, can take part. Next, less tangibly, I hope they learn to catch the formless, gaseous clouds, the pictures and the images that drift across the human mind and give them shape and substance before they are lost forever.

Do we succeed? Much of the time, perhaps most of it, inevitably not. Success with most of the people some of the time is good going. This isn't cynicism. Rather, it is the honesty that ensures our enthusiasm will survive.