Boredom is an enduring problem. In response, schools often do one or both of the following: first, they endorse what novelist Walker Percy describes as a 'boredom avoidance scheme,' adopting new initiative after new initiative in the hope that boredom can be outrun altogether, or second, they compel students to accept boring situations as an inevitable part of life. Both strategies avoid serious reflection on this universal and troubling state of mind. In this book, Gary argues that schools should educate students on how to engage with boredom productively. Rather than being conditioned to avoid or blame boredom on something or someone else, students need to be given tools for dealing with their boredom. These tools provide them with internal resources that equip them to find worthwhile activities and practices to transform boredom into a more productive state of mind. This book addresses the ways students might gain these skills.

Boredom is an enduring problem. In response, schools often do one or both of the following: first, they endorse what novelist Walker Percy describes as a 'boredom avoidance scheme,' adopting new initiative after new initiative in the hope that boredom can be outrun altogether, or second, they compel students to accept boring situations as an inevitable part of life. Both strategies avoid serious reflection on this universal and troubling state of mind. In this book, Gary argues that schools should educate students on how to engage with boredom productively. Rather than being conditioned to avoid or blame boredom on something or someone else, students need to be given tools for dealing with their boredom. These tools provide them with internal resources that equip them to find worthwhile activities and practices to transform boredom into a more productive state of mind. This book addresses the ways students might gain these skills.

Two plays by "one of our most interesting playwrights" (The Times) THE ASTRONOMER'S GARDEN: "While its base is the vicious rivalry between Astronomer Royal Flamsteed and Halley calculating longitude, its true subjects are class, sex and the real world they cannot catalogue. Hood paints the two, irresistibly, as bombastic old sticks, but the play's real strength is its exploration of relationships, showing how Flamsteed's wife and maid navigate male ego-infested waters." Independent The Astronomer's Garden was premiered at the Croydon Warehouse in 1988 and subsequently revived at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 1989.BEACHED: "A couple of young runaways, cast up on the beach of a bird sanctuary, cling to the wreckage of their lives and try to construct some kind of future from the fragments of their emotionally and physically brutalised pasts. Harsh, tender and moving." Time Out Beached was first performed at the Croydon Warehouse and revived 1990 at the Old Red Lion, Islington.