First Impressions: 'The History Boys', National Theatre, London (2004)

Putting ideas in boys' heads: from one point of view, that's the definition of education. It's a mark, though, of the deep-seated mistrust of things intellectual in England that the phrase also has a distinctly dubious edge. The very idea of transmitting ideas was repugnant to the public-school headmaster in Alan Bennett's first stage work, Forty Years On, who preferred the term "schooling" to "education".

The ideological battle-lines are a good deal bloodier in The History Boys, Bennett's new play, which returns to a school setting – this time, a Yorkshire grammar school – and a group of precocious sixth-formers who are preparing for the Oxbridge exams.

The emotional centre of the piece is Hector, a mountainous, maverick English teacher with unorthodox notions of general studies. Richard Griffiths beautifully brings out the erratic, far-from-selfless humanity of a teacher who believes that "exams are the enemy of education". The play's early-Eighties setting allows Bennett to dramatise the first stirrings of the Thatcherite educational culture that became obsessed with "results". Hector's nemesis arrives in the shape of Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), a squeaky-clean young supply teacher, whose task is to put these boys in training for the history scholarship exam.

Superbly sardonic, Frances de la Tour's Mrs Lintott alerts the boys to the shocking possibility that they may be interviewed by a female don. Dominic Cooper is charismatic as the sexpot who is the focus of everyone's desire, and Samuel Barnett is winning as a version of the adolescent Bennett. The plays asks uncomfortable questions – such as, is it better to know about literature or to know some literature by heart? But The History Boys does not pretend that there are easy answers. Full of lightly worn profundity, the play is a delight – and an education.