Drama and education

EDUCATION: A CRITICAL SYSTEM THAT NEEDS DRAMA

By Olga Nancy Orozco Cañón

Caldas University

     No school without spectacular eccentrics

and crazy hearts is worth attending
Saul Bellow

     Education is the performance of our life. Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people get passed on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts. Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drama), which is derived from "to do" or "to act" (Classical Greek: δράω, draō). This way, it is true that education seems to be a current system where learners should be trained through dramatic experiences; experiences that involve  their life improvement.

     During children's early years, we realize that students have different needs and we teachers should  make their life better  so that  they   make good decisions about what they can do and the way to do it. Our main goal is letting students  reach a comfortable life to become good human beings; a life that allows them to be part of  higher education.  In most developed countries a high proportion of the population   now enters higher education at some time in their lives. Higher education is therefore very important to national economies, both as a significant industry in its own right, and as a source of trained and educated personnel for the rest of the economy. 

     We certainly know that great improvements have been achieved in the past decade, yet a great deal still need to be reached . And it is time to change the controversial theory that elite members have about education, as Thomas Frey said in The Future of the Education: “They perpetuate the notion that only doctors can understand medicine, only physics can understand how the  universe works, and only teachers know how to prepare students for the world to come”. 

 

     Education needs drama today.  Teachers should  realize  that students need “action” to acquire knowledge. We need people with good ideas, with excellent projects, with open minds to have inventions, experiments, innovations  and most importantly,  people who can have fun and make the world a more pleasant place. Learning by doing must be our purpose as  teachers today.