UNIT ONE

The passage is taken from George Orwell's reminiscences about his early schooldays, Such, such were the joys…. In the exercises, attention is focussed on Orwell's attitude to his school days, and the ways in which he evokes his surroundings and his feelings. His unusual attitude (principally characterised by feelings of disgust) is thrown into relief by first of all asking the students themselves to evoke their own early schooldays and their feelings towards them. Once Orwell's own descriptive technique has been examined, the students are asked to attempt to put down in words their own experiences (organising their thoughts around a central idea).

Teaching the passage

A. Before you distribute the passage, get the students thinking back to their own earliest memories of school. Ask them to sit back, relax, and close their eyes. Then go on along these lines - "Think back to the time when you were seven or eight……try to remember the school you went to……try to picture it in your mind…..try to see the street, the gate……the corridors….the classroom, …….the teacher…..the other children……(after a minute or so)……try to remember how you felt at school…were you happy?….unhappy?……bored?…frightened? …..lonely?"

B. Ask the students to write down, in a sentence, how they felt at school. Then either ask some what they have written and why, or divide them into pairs, each to find out what the other has written, and why, then to compare their thoughts.

C. Introduce the passage as the memories of a boy who went to an English preparatory school. Distribute it, and ask the students to follow as you read it, then to look through it themselves and write down a word which summarises the writer's attitude to his own schooldays.

D. The best answer, as the students should have no difficulty in recog- nising, is disgust. Write it on the board and establish that all the students know what it means. Go on from here to the comprehension exercise.

Whoever writes of his schooldays must beware of exaggeration and self-pity. I do not claim that I was a martyr or that St. Cyprian's was a sort of Dotheboys Hall. But I should be falsifying my own memories if I did not record that they are largely memories of disgust.. The overcrowded, underfed, underwashed life that we led was disgusting, as I recall it. If I shut my eyes and say 'school', it is of course the physical surroundings that first come back to me: the flat playing field with its cricket pavilion and the little shed by the rifle- range, the draughty dormitories, the dusty, splintery passages, the square of asphalt in front of the gymnasium, the raw-looking pinewood chapel at the back. And at almost every point some filthy detail intrudes itself. For example, there were the pewter bowls out of which we had our porridge. They had over-hanging rims, and under the rims there were accumulations of sour porridge, which could be flaked off in long strips. The porridge itself, too, contained more lumps, hairs, and unexplained black things than one would have thought possible, unless someone were putting them there on purpose. It was never safe to start on that porridge without investigating it first. And then there was the slimy water of the plunge bath - it was twelve or fifteen feet long, the whole school was supposed to go into it every morning, and I doubt whether the water was changed at all frequently - and the always-damp towels with their cheesy smell. And the sweaty smell of the changing room with its greasy basins, and giving on this, the row of filthy dilapidated lavatories, which had no fastenings of any kind on the doors, so that whenever you were sitting There someone was sure to come crashing in. It is not easy for me to think of my schooldays without seeming to breathe in a whiff of something cold and evil-smelling - a sort of compound of sweaty stockings, dirty towels, faecal smells blowing along corridors, forks with old food between the prongs, neck-of-mutton stew, and the banging doors of the lavatories and the echoing chamber pots in the dormitories

1. What is the first thing he remembers about his school?

2. What disgusted him about his life there?

3. What was wrong with the porridge bowls?

4. Why did he have to examine the porridge before eating it?

5. What was wrong with the plunge bath?

6. How often were the towels laundered?

7. What does he remember about the changing room?

8. Why didn't he like using the lavatories?

9. What sounds and smells does he particularly remember?

The rest of the time available should be spent by allowing the students to react imaginatively to the passage they have read. Put the following questions on the board, and ask the students to discuss them, dividing them into groups of two or three.

1. What kind of child do you think this boy is?

2. How do you think he appeared to his friends?

Help students who appear to be having difficulty, especially by asking them to try and focus on details, as the writer himself does. For example, how did he eat? Did he pick at his food or eat it greedily? Was he an untidy boy? Did he work hard? Did he enjoy hearing or telling dirty jokes? Get the students to build up a picture in their minds and then to write a passage entitled "How I remember George Orwell". (The passage is taken from Orwell's reminiscences of his schooldays in Such, such were the joys.. but the students should not be told until this point is reached).

If you wish to set homework, ask the students to write a paragraph on Their own school days, either following Orwell's model, or using the third person and focusing on external details that other boys might have noticed. When going over this work, stress the difference between what can be revealed in first-person narrative, and discuss with the students the contents in which one or the other might be more effective.