Gymnasium Münchenstein:

History in English 3^rd form

London 16^th – 20^th January 2007

Programme

ß BACK

Tuesday, 16th January
09.00	Meeting at the easyJet check-in at the EuroAirport Basel
10’.25	Departure
11.05	Arrival Luton Airport
	Transfer to London (Coach to Marble Arch, tube to Bayswater)
Ca. 2 pm	Check- in at Hyde Park Hostel Hyde Park Hostel 2-6 Inverness Terrace London W2 3HU Tel. +44 (0) 20 7229 5101 Fax.+44 (0) 20 7229 3170 E-Mail: groups@astorhostels.com
Afternoon	Departure for a guided exploration of central London on foot , by bus and by tube (depending on the weather): Highlights (among others): Hyde Park Kensington Palace Peter Pan Albert Memorial The Serpentine Speaker’s Corner Green Park Buckingham Palace Queen Victoria Memorial The Mall (St. James’s Palace, Clarence House) Trafalgar Sq. Charing Cross Thames Hungerford Bridge Westminster Houses of Parliament – Big Ben
Evening	Evening meal together in Chinatown
Wednesday, 17^th January
8.00 am	Breakfast
From morning till afternoon	Exploring the east of London Boat ride from Westminster to Greenwich Greenwich village Observatory Tunnel to Isle of Dogs Docklands

Evening

7.30 pm

Alan Bennett, The History Boys Directed by: Nicholas Hytner at the Wyndham Theatre Charing Cross Road, London [Tube: Leicester Square]

Review (The Guardian, May 19^th, 2004): A subtle, deep-wrought and immensely funny play about the value and meaning of education. Bennett's setting is a northern grammar school in the Thatcherite eighties and his focus on the varied methods The headmaster, obsessed with league-tables and results, wants them all to be Oxbridge candidates. To this end, he engages a young historian, Irwin, who knows that the key to exam success lies in singularity and that "the wrong end of the stick is the right one". In the opposite camp is the gentle English master, Mr Hector, who argues that exams are the enemy of education and who Audenishly believes that words alone are certain good. Clearly Bennett is writing in praise of Hector and the non-utilitarian, anti-Gradgrind approach to education. At the same time, he is fair enough to show that in history, above all, you need a certain grounding in facts before you can begin to achieve interpretation. Bennett also complicates the issue by making Hector an amiable pederast who likes to grope the boys as they ride pillion on his motor-bike and by making Irwin a closeted homosexual terrified of acting on his impulses. What is astonishing is how much territory Bennett manages to cover: the teaching and meaning of history, inflexible and imaginative approaches to education, and the idea, as in Forty Years On, that a school has the potential to be a metaphor for English life. It is no accident that the play is set in the eighties, when the arguments between beleaguered humanism and pragmatic functionalism were at the very height. The play is also blissfully funny, not least in a scene where Hector improves the boys' French by getting them to impersonate the clients of a bordello, only to be interrupted by a surprised and astonished headmaster. But behind the almost ceaseless laughter lies a hymn to the joys of language, intellectual exploration and inspirational educators.

Thursday, 18^th January

8.30 am	Breakfast
Morning	Exploring South Bank – Shakespeare’s London: The Globe Theatre The Tate Modern – with helter-skelter slides by German artist Carsten Höller Southwark Cathedral Borough Market Old operating theatre of the St. Thomas’s Hospital, Museum & Herb Garret at 9a St. Thomas St, London SE1 9RY à Demonstration of a 19^th c. surgery

Afternoon	The museum of your choice: Visit of the museum of one’s choice. (The admission to museums, art galleries and exhibition rooms vary considerably, from free to £15.00; that’s why your expenses were refunded against showing the ticket.) Museums visited, a.o.: · The British Museum · The National Gallery · The Imperial War Museum · The Tate Modern · The Tower Bridge Exhibition The History of Sir John Soane’s Museum www.londonnet.co.uk/ln/guide/about/museums.html www.londontourist.org/museums.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_London
Evening	Preparing and having dinner at the hostel Free evening
Friday, 19^th January
8.30	Breakfast
Morning	Exploring Legal London: The Inns of Court and The Royal Court of Justice with barristers and judges in traditional gowns and wigs, including watching the proceedings of trials in progress.
Afternoon	Exploring Metropolitan London
	Aspects of metropolitan London, the capital of the Empire – then and now. Exploration and documentation, if possible with a digital camera, for later use in the classroom.

Choice of aspects:

	Brixton Street Market Railway stations (St. Pancras, Liverpool Street, Victoria etc. Hampstead and Hampstead Heath Regent’s Canal from Camden Lock to Little Venice
Evening	19.30 Jack the Ripper Walk through the East End with a most vivid verbal re-enactment of late 19^th century living conditions in the slums of the East End by the guide. Italian farewell dinner in Bayswater Road.

Saturday, 20^th January
9 am	Breakfast
	Free morning
Afternoon
3 pm	Leaving the Hostel Journey to Luton Airport
7.15 pm 22.10	Departure – one hour late Arrival at EuroAirport Basel

ß TOP

ß BACK