The History Boys

Sincerely, I am not really into British movies as the English is more complicated, not straightforward and the thick British accent makes it more difficult. When, I heard that we were going to watch two movies, I was excited but when I knew that the second movie was a British movie, it took back my interest. However, after watching the movie, I found that it was not that bad although there were some troubles in understanding what’s happening in the movie. Generally, the movie is a mixture of tragedy and comedy. It was hard to determine the message of the movie. First, the movie is about a group of students in Cutlers’ Grammar School, Sheffield preparing themselves to sit for Oxford University entrance examination as they have passed their A-level examination with flying colours. It is different from the first movie as the students are selected students or elite students and they do not have trouble with their studies and apparently all of them are smart. In between, the story portrays the theme of homosexuality and various beliefs in teaching or educating. Truly, till now I am not sure whether Dakin is a gay of not. To me he is not a good looking man but this is a British movie so Dakin can be considered as a good looking man. Whatever it is, I was interested in the teaching styles used by the three different teachers, Hector, Irwin and Lintott. I prefer Hector as he allows the students to come out with their own interpretations. The class is more enjoyable and interesting. But he is a weird teacher as he has this ‘close’ bond with the students. He is actually misusing his students to fulfil his sexual desire but he is not a bad teacher as he cares about the students and he loves his career as a teacher. Meanwhile, Irwin, the new teacher has more reliable teaching style than Hector, he trained the students to learn by looking at facts…(that is what I understood). He lied to Dakin that he graduated from Corpus and this might be because he is a little bit jealous with the students’ intelligence as he claimed that he is not that smart. Here we can see how important it is to have solid education background to become a teacher. Lintott, the female teacher is a mixture of both. She is portrayed like other female teachers. Personally, the situation (preparing for university entrance examination) is in a way similar to what we are facing in Malaysia. Students are working hard to prepare themselves for examination and this shows that any education systems are not free from examination.