Zoe’s Blog of Joy

Learning Through Drama 

Jo introduced us to the idea that children learn through imaginative play. In groups, we discussed the age at which we think play stops, and also what kinds of imaginative play we engaged in as children.
Nick and Darcy were in my group, and interestingly, Nick’s were a bit different to mine and Darcy’s because they were more masculine, involving fighting and war and such things. I can remember playing shops (which Darcy had also done) and with dolls (I had this collection of Sylvanian families – little bears and rabbits, with tiny pieces of furniture and tiny tea sets, and tiny clothes, I loved collecting them), and also my brother and I used to draw lines on the footpath in chalk and ride our bikes on them as though they were roads and we were in cars. We would have petrol stations and shops that we would go to, and we would pay for things with leaves. My brother is seven years older than me, so I often engaged in games that were a lot more sophisticated and had more rules than the games I could have invented on my own.

Jo said that Peter Slade, who has written about imaginative play, says that children become serious and stop engaging in play (in front of adults) at about age seven. Considering that my brother was seven when I was born, this means that my brother was much older than seven when he became serious and stopped playing, I remember him playing leggo well into his teens…and walky talkies (anyone remember those?) in his twenties…he did mature rather late. I remember the turning point for me was on my 10^th birthday my dad offered to buy me a dolls house (which I had wanted for so long because I didn’t have a house for my Sylvanian family) or roller skates – and I decided on the roller skates which were cooler and more practical.

We engaged in a whole group “play” where we were all working in a fertilizer company called “fertifree”. We assumed roles as different people working in the factory – cleaners, production workers, maintenance guys etc. Inevitably some conflict arose out of the role play in terms of staff hierarchies and stuff. Then Jo convened us all in the role of the human resources manager (or something like that) to tell us that we were getting some kind of a bonus scheme because the company was doing so well, (which meant nothing to many of us as, such as myself, because we were just daft production workers). She also told us about a leak that was apparently not a problem (which was obviously to plant a seed of conflict).

The next “teacher in role” that Jo assumed was that of a muscle farmer who was concerned that there was some pollution going into the ocean and that it might effect her muscle farm. This caused some gossip and unrest in the workplace. Lost of people were being blamed and the underdogs thought they may loose their jobs. When the muscle farmer came back for another meeting we discovered that whatever was going into the ocean was actually making her muscles grow faster and better than ever.

I’m not sure we really came to any solution in the drama but it threw up a lot of ethical dilemmas and got everyone really involved in trying to solve the issue because their character had a stake in whatever the outcome. This would be different to just discussing the issue not in role. I believe if you just proposed the issue and had them debate it students would not be able to get as many different perspectives, to invest themselves in it or to get passionate about the topic.