Imagine dragons Joss Williams, Head of Earlscliffe

Joss Williams, Head of Earlscliffe, argues that educators must help students discover how to be the hero of their own story

There is a wonderful scene at the start of the first of the Hobbit films, where Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins runs out of his home, village and shire and sets off on the great adventure which will define him and his family for generations. He is rather a dull stick-in-the-mud, and the last person — Hobbit — you would imagine would go on such a journey, but his friend Gandalf sees something in him and believes he is just the chap for a wild adventure. He accepts the challenge to be the hero in his own story and goes off, if not to slay a dragon, then at least to annoy one pretty seriously.

A still from the movie shows Bilbo, normally the most prepared and methodical of Hobbits, rushing off to catch up with the rest of the party, in such a mess that he even forgets his handkerchief. He has been allocated the role of thief, without any such expertise or experience in his life, and as soon as he is tested by the challenges that any such quest inevitably throws in his path, he wishes he had not gone on this journey, that he were at home beside his fire smoking a pipe, and is full of doubts that he can cope, or perhaps even survive.

The Hobbit is a wonderful archetype of a story, weaving together at least three of the seven basic plots: the quest; voyage and return; and overcoming the monster, and quests have been central to storytelling back to The Odyssey and probably before that, too. The quest and its outcome is so popular and works so well because it parallels the path of human life, and it is through telling stories that we make sense of life and ourselves. It is a significant part of the Bible’s strength that it communicates through story. Gandalf and a rag-tag mob of characters enter Bilbo’s life, tell him stories of dragons and riches far away, and he falls under their spell and launches himself into a life he never imagined.

It may be heretical to say it, but I do not most enjoy being an educator because of what my students achieve and do in their time in my class or school; the greatest pleasure for me is not in celebrating their results, or achievements on stage, or on the sports pitch, but in looking into the future of these young people. If we get this right, they will take the lessons of school — of success and failure — and use them to launch themselves into life and go on to do amazing things. I have to take the role of Gandalf, see the promise and fire in my students and encourage them to launch themselves into the quest for gold and dragons and whatever life will bring. It is such a joy to catch up with former students who are now Olympians and pilots and actors — one has just popped up, by coincidence, on Amazon in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power — and entrepreneurs and triathlon coaches and hear how the lessons of school and their precious time there prepared them to discover their own path.

They had to aspire. We have to teach each generation to look over the hill or round the corner, or at best look in the place they least want to go, and see what is there and learn that they can face the challenge, even embrace it. When they do that in the safe environment that a loving home and caring school can offer, so that we can pick them up when they fall, they will later be ready to pick themselves up off the floor and push themselves on when life brings its awful challenges.

In literary terms, such a discovery, as well as being in the place we last want to look, is often the last thing a character would imagine or fear or conceive. This is called anagnorisis. It is the momentous cathartic event when King Lear finally realises the true character of each of his three daughters; when Malcolm Crowe in The Sixth Sense discovers the awesome truth about himself; and so for Oedipus and so for Electra and so for César in Manon des Sources. Such events are often so awful and destructive that the character cannot recover from this discovery. We are blessed if we never have to suffer such a reversal ourselves. The smaller reversals and failure of life can be withstood in a nurturing and compassionate environment.

Having suffered and not enjoyed it, there is a tendency for the older generation to over-protect, to stand in front of the storm and shelter the child, argue against every unfairness and perceived injustice and smooth the path. That works if we never want the child to become the hero in their own story, but not in a world of dark woods, freezing storms and avaricious dragons. Our world contains all of those things and worse, but heroes are not made by keeping them warm and safe in the nursery. What children need from us, as they discover themselves and the world, is knowledge of how to light a fire for themselves and others, the ability to stand up when they fall and a willingness to go on an adventure.

As we head into a new year, I will be looking for every chance to help a student confront life, even confront me and their school if they feel they need to, to shove them out of the door into the storm to go and defeat a dragon or two. n