Friday, April 5, 1946
Goldsboro Hi News
Page Three
GHS Instructor Makes Study Of Dramatics In State High Schools
By Clifton Britton
Uu to the present, very little
has been done to direct the atten
tion of teachers, parents, and
school officials to the real value of
educational dramatics in the high
school. Many principals and su
perintendents have assumed, with
out taking the trouble to investi
gate, that dramatics is a way for
students to waste their time.
Many parents have believed it is
used as an escape from study,
even some of the authors and com
pilers who have stated, in their
prefaces and introductions, that
their textbooks were planned for
students and teachers participat
ing in educational dramatics, have
not shown a real understanding
of the possibilities.
Write For Profit
If the educational value of
these books is the chief contribu
tion, then a number of the au
thors had better stop writing. Too
many continue to write from a
commercial point of view, placing
the emphasis on the box~office re
ceipts rather than on the develop
ment of the child. Educational
dramatics has not yet liberated the
powers and set free the energies
of creative youth in the secondary
schools.
President Emeritus Charles W.
Eliot of Harvard, years ago made
this prophetic statement:
Here is this tremendous power
over children . . . that ought to be
utilized for their good. It is true
that the dramatic instinct is very
general ... So I say that this
power ... is one that ought to be
in at least every school in this
•country, and, moreover, I believe
that it is going to be.
There is a valuable truth in
■what President Eliot says, but the
■writer believes that very few
teachers are using to the best nd-
vantage the power he mentioned.
Well, what has happened? Rugg
and Shumaker in their book, The
Child-Centered School, state the
reason that teachers have failed.
After saying that the schools
snatched at anything which,
promised to motivate school work, I
^authors enlarge upon the ap^
mm^
The cast of Jane Parker’s original play, “Mountain Laurel”,
is shown above. Members are Margie Perry, Robert Andrews,
Billy Ray, and Catherine Robinson.
It is the pupil’s place to learn his | for boys and girls should have
part. At the appropriate time he , as one of its major objectives the
will be permitted to recite. The ■ development of the personality of
teacher is an autocrat director, | the individual student. What is
producer, manager, . . . the mind I the student’s personality? Edmund
behind the scenes. Children are I S. Conklin says, “The personality
puppets in his hands, just as they j is the combined product of a vast
are during the formal recitation. ] number of traits, abilities,'char-
Tieated thus, dramatics in the acters, trends, drives, tendencies.
school is foredoomed to die. It is
perfectly clear that the teachers
and administrators have nad lit
tle effort toward developing a
drama promoting the personal
growth if the youngster.
From the earliest times children
have participated in non-profes
sional adult drama, though it was
not till the establishment of the
theatre of Mme. de Genlis, in 1784,
tKat they had a drama all their
own, guided to fit their special
needs.
Religious Festival
and the like, much of which is
still beyond scientific knowledge.”
Consider the contribution which
proper training in dramatics can
and shoul.d make to the personal
growth of the boy and girl. This
contribution may be summed up
quickly as the development of the
student’s personality through con
trolled expressional activity in a
cooperative social situation.
More specifically, work in dra
matics gives the student, in a far
greater degree than most class
room procedures can, opportunity
for expressional activity. It is
now a truism that boys and girls
learn through activity—they learn
much better through working in
concrete situations.
I which the adolescent is supposed
to learn by impression and far too
few in which he can learn by ex
pression. One of the great values
of work in dramatic art is that it
leads the student to learn by ex
pression—by acting with his body,
his voice, and his mind.
Aids Cooperation
Yet another great value of work
in dramatics is training the adoles
cent to act not simply as an indi
vidual, but as an individual coop
erating with others to attain a so
cial goal. A group of students sit
ting in a classroom taking notes
from a teacher’s lecture or answer
ing questions which the teacher
asks can hardly be said to cooper
ate. The same students working
together to produce a scene are
cooperating in the best social
sense. Team play is demanded.
This necessity for team play i;
fundamental in all work in dra
matics, from the simplest dia
logue in a classroom to the most
complex and elaborate production
of a Shakespearean play.
Some of the values which the
adolescent gains from such team
play are obvious; others no less
important, are more subtle. The
most aggressive boy and girl has
to learn to be patient, to wait till
his cue comes, and to modulate
his part in accordance with the
needs of the whole scene. The
most timid student, the girl with
downcast eyes who is afraid to
speak above a whisper, is helped
by learning that she is wanted and
has her place, that others will
wait for her, and that at the right
time she must speak out loud and
clear. Each student learns that his
success depends on the activity of
others in the group and that their
success depends on him. Some-
Dan Bernstein, Carl Casey, and Ned Champion are the
characters to play in "Gold Is Where You Don’t Find It”, one
of the plays to be entered in the State Dramatics Contest held
at Chapel Hill this week.
and, if this activity I'eceives the
right guidance, it will be artistic.
Through dramatics the student is
helped to discover the reality' of
artistic values. He learns about
art not simply as something other
people talk about or as something
his teacher believes in; he learns
by taking part in a creative pro
cess.
In the religious and community
festivals of ancient Greece, white-
robed and flower-crowned chil
dren of shepherds and farmers ap
peared in the ritual before Pomo
na’s altar; boys of noble birth,
ci’owned with vine leaves, were
plication of thffe 'plan to dramat-; aspects of personality mentioned
in the Thargelian lestivals, but I by Conklin. Too frequently the
these, dramas were arranged to student is trained to receive ac-
These situations must give the
child much freedom to develop the
He learns not only to act, but
to act according to an excellent
pattern. He uses speech more
mature than his own and learns
to make assumptions beyond his
direct experiences. He discovers
what more subtly, the adolescent; patterns by which he may shape
learns that his success depends himself.
not only on what others do, but
on the spirit in which they do it.
He learns the difference between
listless and spirited cooperation.
Individual Expression
Work in dramatics thus gives
each boy and each girl an oppor
tunity for individual expressional
activity in a cooperative situation;
A student well directed will be
benefited by the many roles he
ics:
Dramatics was hailed with as-
claim and made the cart horse for
a lot of unrelated educational out
comes. Language and literature
were dramatized; history plays
were marshaled in order to teach
the facts of the founding of our
country. There were arithmetic
plays, health plays intended to
bring home the importance of ob
serving hygiene chores, geography
plays dramatizing the home life of
peoples of other lands . . . The
publishers advertised lists of
“plays for every occasion.”
Dramatics A Slave
Therefore dramatics in the pub
lic school is too often a slave and
personal servant for every subject
in the curriculum. It has nothing
of its own to add. In this situa
tion, the dramatization means lit
tle except further memorization.
CRUMPLER
SECRETARIAL SCHOOL
Nora A. Crumpler, Director
Complete Secretarial, Steno
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satisfy adults. Child players were
never considered.
Herein should lie the difference
between the ancient and modern
play movement in relation to the
child. Nowadays the benefit to be
derived by the child participant
should be the first consideration.
Whether the Grecian child play
er benefited the play, or even un
derstood what it was about was
not considered at all.
Should Develop Pupil
Work in educational dramatics
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quiescently; too rarely he is train
ed to act on his own initiative.
He sits in the classroom day after
day receiving what the teacher
gives; he is being trained to be
passive. Schools provide far too
many classroom situations in
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plays; he will live vicariously
much that he cannot live actual
ly. To give character to a role,
according to the three authors of
a manual on acting, “means to en
dow that role with the mental fa
cilities, the emotions, the pecu
liarities of personality, the physi
cal aspect, and the personal man
nerisms twhich are integrally a
part of a particular human being.”
To do this a number of times can
not fail to enrich.
Must Play Part
The adolescent olays a role
which .is not himself, and is thus
forced to project himself emotion
ally into the character of another
person. The art of playing an
other’s part forces him to get out
of himself, out of the narrow boun-
I daries of his habitual activity and
to experience the emotions, the
distinctive qualities, the manner
isms of another person. Thus he
learns to see the world from an
other point of view, to feel the
problems forced by another char
acter in another situation. There
fore, the sympathetic social un
derstanding of the student is en
larged; he becomes less narrow,
more tolerane, more flexible.
There is no better way to un-
Continued on Page Four
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