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Drama, Education, and the Politics of Change: Part One

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

David Hornbrook
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Abstract

Drama-in-education is a subject – or a set of theories – which became an educational discipline almost by historical accident, and about which strong feelings can still be aroused. That the arguments are too often confined to educationalists is symptomatic of the way the problems raised have seldom been shared with or considered by people working in professional theatre – and this in turn reflects the way that the subject has tended to be taught, with the emphasis strongly on its ‘educational’ rather than its ‘theatrical’ potential. Back in 1973. David Clegg's article ‘The Dilemma of Drama in Education’, in TQ9, caused a briefly wider flurry of interest, and in the present article David Hornbrook also attempts to put the subject into a contemporary critical perspective, looking here at what children are supposed to ‘learn’ and ‘experience’ through drama, and in the second part of his article, to follow in NTQ 5, examining present and future prospects for the subject. A repertory actor in the 1960s. David Hornbrook has himself taught drama in a large comprehensive school, and is currently Head of Performing Arts at the City of Bath College of Further Education, and Special Lecturer in Drama in the University of Bristol.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , November 1985 , pp. 346 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes and References

1. Clegg, David, ‘The Dilemma of Drama in Education’, Theatre Quarterly, III, 9 (1973)Google Scholar.

2. For responses from Dorothy Heathcote and others, see Theatre Quarterly, III, 10 (1973).

3. For the most coherent example of this project, see Bolton, Gavin, Drama as Education (Longman, 1984)Google Scholar.

4. Rousseau, J. J., trans. Bloom, A., Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. d' Alembert on the Theatre (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960), p. 20Google Scholar.

5. Wagner, B. J., Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium (Hutchinson, 1979), p. 221Google Scholar.

6. Bolton, Gavin, Towards a Theory of Drama in Education (Longman, 1979), p. 31Google Scholar.

7. Rousseau, Politics and the Arts, p. 16.

8. Ibid., p. 25.

9. Ibid., p. 125–6.

10. Goethe, Samtliche Werke, XXXIII, p. 17–18, quoted in Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar.

11. Trilling, Lionel, Sincerity and Authenticity (Harvard, 1971), p. 99–100Google Scholar.

12. Hourd, M. L., The Education of the Poetic Spirit (Heinemann, 1949), p. 151Google Scholar.

13. Skidelsky, R., English Progressive Schools (Penguin, 1969), p. 250Google Scholar.

14. Ibid.

15. Cook, H. Caldwell, The Play Way (Heinemann, 1917)Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., p. 4.

17. Ibid., p. 47.

18. Handbook for Teaching in Elementary Schools (HMSO, 1942), p. 23.

19. Slade, Peter, Child Drama (London, 1954)Google Scholar.

20. I am indebted to Ken Robinson for these figures.

21. Pemberton-Billing, R. N. and Clegg, David, Teaching Drama (London, 1965)Google Scholar.

22. Clegg, ‘The Dilemma of Drama in Education’, p. 38.

23. Pemberton-Billing and Clegg, p. 15.

24. Witkin, R., The Intelligence of Feeling (Heinemann, 1974)Google Scholar.

25. Way, Brian, Development through Drama (Longman, 1967)Google Scholar.

26. Ibid., p. 3.

27. For examples of these lists of claims, see Fairclough, G., The Play is NOT the Thing (Blackwell, 1972)Google Scholar, or Self, D., A Practical Guide to Drama in the Secondary School (Ward Lock, 1975)Google Scholar.

28. Heathcote, Dorothy, ‘Drama as Challenge’, in Hodgson, John, ed., The Uses of Drama (Methuen, 1972)Google Scholar.