The long and the short and the tall - part 2 · Fri Sep 22, 18:48 by Eleri Straker
Today I began teaching the Long and the Short and the Tall again. It’s a new year and I have a new year 10 group. Well actually, it’s not a completely new group as many of the students are from my lovely year 9 class from last year. They’re a very bright bunch and I’m looking forward to the next two years with them.
Anyway, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve taught the Willis Hall play a couple of times before and it’s always worked well with boy-heavy groups. This new class isn’t boy-heavy, but they are very sharp.
After spending half the lesson discussing whether or not war can be justified, we began reading the play. I told the class that I wanted them to read the play as if it were for radio, in other words, to make sure they understood the stage directions and read the words with feeling. I needn’t have worried. They read brilliantly. But what was really interesting, was the fact that they laughed. No other class has found the opening scenes amusing, but this lot did. As the student reading the lead part of Bamforth understood the wit and acid humour of the character, her skilful reading conveyed this cynical wit to the rest of the class. I was astonished. It’s a serious and thoughtful play so I didn’t expect the laughter. But it was right. Bamforth is funny. At least for part of the play.
I listened to their reading with pleasure. It was an eye-opener for me to watch my students seeing something in a play that I hadn’t considered before. What was surprising was that they could see and understand the humour in the language used – the language and slang of WW2.
After reading the first act, I asked them who of the seven characters they believed was a liability. It was fascinating to listen to their ideas and arguments. Unlike the previous class to whom I taught this play, there is no one in this group who is in a military training corps, seeing the characters as soldiers, not people, so their reasoning was totally different. They saw the characters as human beings and consequently saw Bamforth as something of a hero, not the liability he quite possibly is. They interpreted his actions in the play as the actions of a decent human being, someone who saw the enemy as a man, not, as Mitchem says, “…something in a uniform and it’s a different shade to mine.”
By the end of the discussion that followed the reading of the play, the students understood Mitchem’s argument and were quite distressed to find that it made sense. Which is quite possibly the reaction that Hall hoped for: things are different in war; humanity has no place on the battlefield and that is its essential tragedy.
I know that my class will do well in English, they have intelligence and insight. They are also thoughtful. To me, this is the most important thing of all, as at the end of the day, English teachers have the skills to help create young people who are not just brilliant academics but also rounded human beings who respect and honour life. My class’s reaction to The Long and the Short and the Tall showed me that they are already half way there.
