Content area
Full text
ABSTRACT: There was a debate after the second world war about whether drama method was educational or whether it was therapeutic? (Peter Slade, 1958) This article aims to make a distinction between educational and therapeutic method, hence, to evaluate Peter Slade's drama method.
KEYWORDS: Drama-therapy, Educational Drama, Catharsis.
1Introduction
Peter Slade was a post-second-world-British-drama-teacher. Based on the drama method he has established; he has eventually led intellectuals to reflect on the real functions of drama in general. The major problematic that arose was the following: Should drama be inserted into the school curriculum to serve educational or therapeutic purposes? Where drama is believed to be therapeutic, its main function lies in curing the emotionally damaged individual/learner. Should it be on the contrary educational, its main target is to help students to improve their knowledge of the world as well as their academic achievements. The educational aspect of drama is rather conceived by some intellectuals to be other than just alliance to subjects finding echo in the curriculum. Drama according to this trend should even be given its worth as an independent unit of the curriculum. Learners would consequently seek to assimilate theatre rules as such rather than think of drama just as a medium to improve major subjects in the curriculum like history and geography, maths.. They are in other words expected to target becoming play wrights and real dramatists.
It was common for people following the publication of Peter Slade's book Child Drama to wonder if the teaching of drama should focus on forming resilient students who are relegated the task of leading the British nation via the conquest of alien territories in search for raw materials or on just helping British individuals to be subjected to therapy to overcome feeling emotionally damaged through creative self-expression. Indeed, Post-War British citizens were portrayed in books as emotionally stunted. 'The British strong and resilient and stiff upper lip attitude dating back to the colonial era which span from 1870 to 1945 weakened at that time. It gave way to emotion and to social equality education based on self-development through therapy.
Our objective consists, therefore, in probing into the nature of the drama-method devised by (Peter Slade, 1958) [16]. Has Peter Slade founded the ground work...