Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Bookshelf by Phil Moore

Published in Madrid, November, 2008

Teaching English in Madrid can be a frustrating business. From September to June students will persist stoically with phrases such as, ‘the people is’; they’ll turn up in winter telling you that they are ‘constipated’, and when you attempt to explain the difference in pronunciation between ‘sheep’ and ‘ship’, they’ll look at you as if you’ve just announced that you’re going to have a sex change.

Over the years I’ve tried almost everything to tempt students out of this linguistic purgatory. The most effective technique I ever discovered was to bring along to class a small, metallic Russian roulette gadget that I’d been given for a birthday and which delivered sharp electric shocks to unfortunate victims.

Improvements in standards were staggering, but, like all good things, it wasn’t to last. One day I was called in to see the director of studies who had got wind of the fact that I was electrocuting around three students an hour, and she demanded that I stop immediately. Apparently one of the HR managers had developed a nervous twitch.

Having to change my teaching methodology, I decided to turn to books. I went up to the highest floor of Fnac and bought all the classics that I could find: Dahl, Twain, Dickens, Tolkien and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. More language, context, discussion and culture could be drawn out of these books, I decided, than a Bernabéu full of Inside Out photocopies. Soon the roulette wheel had been replaced by an arsenal of the finest English literature I could get my hands on.

Of all the different styles of writing, and all the different genres, I’ve found that one particular breed of book is ideally suited to the English classroom: stories that are told through the eyes of a child. One example of such a book is Mark Haddon’s wonderful The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It works in class because the language is unfussy and precise, whilst the story is told with that childhood clarity that seems to desert all of us in adolescence. Identifying with the 15 year old Christopher Boone, a sufferer of a rare strain of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome proved fiercely addictive, and in the classroom it was perfect.

A number of other books fall into this category. John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is one. First published in 2006, the book has caused a lasting stir in the literary world: The Guardian dubbed it, ‘A small wonder of a book,’ it won two Irish book awards, the Children’s Book of the Year and in Spain its translation, El Niño con El Pijama de Rajas scooped the Qué Leer Award.

Like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it is excellent in the classroom because of its accessibility. It tells the familiar story of The Holocaust through the eyes of a young German child called Bruno, whose father works as a NAZI official at the Auschwitz death camp. At the periphery of the action, Bruno’s abstract experiences add a chilling reality to the enormous crimes being committed. He refers to his home as ‘Out-With’, and in one typical passage of bitter irony, an innocent Bruno explains how he is forced to adopt the NAZI salute:

‘He opened the door and Father called him back for a moment, standing up and raising an eyebrow as if he’d forgotten something. Bruno remembered the moment his father made this signal, and said the phrase and imitated him exactly.

He pushed his two feet together and shot his right arm into the air before clicking his two heels together and saying in as deep and clear a voice possible – as much like Father as he could manage – the words he said every time he left a soldier’s presence.

‘Heil Hitler,’ he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, ‘Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.’

The power of Boyne’s prose is striking and unsettling. His masterstroke is to reduce a complex, horrendous crime to its bare facts: Why did they have to wear striped pyjamas? Why can he not talk to them? We see The Holocaust with rare clarity, as Boyne invites the read to empathise, to challenge and to debate.

Boyne’s book is a little gem, with a hidden twist in its final pages. At less than 30,000 words, it is short enough for an intermediate class to be through it within a month, and along the way it provokes thought – that key element of the learning process. It might not be Russian roulette, but it is certainly worth a spin.