TEMPELMAN

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A second shot at life.

My old school recently discovered that the skeleton used in biology lessons and theatre performances is not made of plastic at all. Somehow, the remains of a real human have been given a second life. The school apologised, saying that they usually check their equipment but obviously failed in this case. A reasonable defense, I think. What else could they have done? Tried to make broth from the bone frame? Personally, I can't help but wonder if the mistake may turn out to be pedagogical gold. Both Hamlet and biology lessons suddenly take on a completely different tone. There's another person in the room. Who was this human who walked the earth for a while?

I believe this can be a groundbreaking step away from the academically dry and artistically dusty. Like a parachute jump into the deeply personal that only a lived life can offer. Suddenly, students are not staring into the plastic hollowness of a skull but meeting the gaze of a human. A life story. Hamlet is actually Mike Richards who fell asleep drunk in the rapeseed field and didn't hear the combine harvester coming early in the morning.

I see enormous opportunities for the country's teachers ahead of me. All schools should be equipped with real skeletons, and teachers should have free rein to come up with anything they want about their origins. We want to connect with people and need to create the history that education requires.

-Here comes George Washington.

Isn't that an opening for a history lesson that no one will forget?

-Kids, meet Jeanette, she died of tertiary syphilis. You can see it in the skeletal injuries here and here. (Sex education)

-Simon went to this school until he joined a criminal gang and was killed by a rival gang who cut off his genitalia and let him bleed to death. (Social studies)

This will revolutionise both education and theatre. It also leads me to think a little extra about my own death. I don't want to be cremated or buried. Not when there's an opportunity to enrich future generations. I want to live forever as a teaching aid and prop.