Like all human instincts, the dramatic instinct may be misused. It must not be confused with dramatic talent, which is a special gift bestowed upon only a few. The dramatic impulse in children, as Joseph Lee says, is “not the impulse toward dramatics in the grown-up sense—toward representing to other people what is passing in the actor’s mind. It is, rather, the converse of this, being the method whereby children make clear to themselves what they suppose to be in the minds of other people and of other things, or of what is dimly passing in their own.”
The educational value, therefore, of the instinct, lies not in producing finished dramatic products, but in cultivating the child’s imagination through expression.
The Moral Value of This Instinct
The moral values are even greater than the educational. The dramatic instinct is, in the main, a wholesome outlet to a child’s energies. “Good imagination,” says Kirtley, “is good hygiene.” The child ceases to be an obstreperous nuisance who has some imaginative task to perform. Through taking his part, perhaps a minor one, in dramatic play, he learns to cooperate unselfishly with others. Acting itself develops a sense of humor which tends toward a sympathetic philosophy of life.
Dramatic play tends to make the sympathetic attitude continuous. The adult whom you love because she is so sympathetic is sympathetic because she has imagination, because she can put herself imaginatively in your place. The only child or the child brought up by a private tutor lacks sympathy because he has had so few opportunities to put himself in the place of anybody else.
But the great moral value of the dramatic instinct is that it gives a child the opportunity to understand moral issues by having imitative experiences of them.
“In life,” says Mrs. Herts, “youth could hardly discern the miser, spendthrift, liar, hypocrite, egoist, prodigal, swindler, gambler, patriot, martyr, and all the rest. Each quality is disguised and mixed with others. But the drama presents a large repertory of such simplified, elemental human qualities, admirably adjusted to the educative or apprenticeship stage of life. The primitive traits, of which human nature is made up, can be observed and studied as a mechanic studies a machine, part by part, before it is put together.”
In her play with her doll, the little girl learns self-control. Because to her the doll is as real as her baby brother or sister, she can be made to feel that she, as its mother, must be a good example and not lose her temper. Working together with others, in later childhood, while dramatizing a story or playing a dramatic game, further assists the child to gain control of self with all its conflicting impulses.
By making work pleasurable, the habit of industry may be rooted early in the child’s life through the use of the dramatic impulse. In Education by Plays and Games, G. E. Johnson tells of a father who succeeded in getting his boys to pick up all the stones in a field and pile them in one spot, by placing a large stone in the center and suggesting it as a mark for the boys to pitch stones at.
Mrs. Herts illustrates the character-making power which comes from performing a noble part in a drama by the following experience: