The Artist. “Evidently I have not made myself clear. The problem of Education with respect to Art is to keep alive the child’s creative impulses, and use them in the real world of adult life. We don’t want to kill the artist in him; nor do we want to keep him a child all his life in some tiny corner of the world, apart from its serious activities. We don’t want the slave who has forgotten how to play, nor the dreamer who is afraid of realities. We want an education which will merge the child’s play into the man’s life, the artist’s dreams into the citizen’s labours. The Theatre—”
“Excuse me, but what I can’t see is how a Children’s Theatre is going to do all that! Even if you put a theatre in every school-building—”
The Artist. “You quite mistake my meaning. I would rather confiscate the theatres and put a school into each of them; and so, for that matter, would I do with the factories! But, unfortunately, I am not Minister of Public Education. In default of that, what I propose is small enough—but it is not so small as you suppose when you think that I want to set children to rehearsing plays and making scenery for a school play. I propose rather that the spirit of the Theatre—the spirit of creative play—should enter into every branch of the school work, until the school itself becomes a Theatre—a gorgeous, joyous, dramatic festival of learning-to-live.
“Think how real History would become if it were dramatized by the children themselves! I do not mean its merely picturesque moments, but its real meanings, acted out—the whole drama of human progress—a group of cave-men talking of the days before men knew how to make fire—Chaldean traders, Babylonian princes, Egyptian slaves, each with his story to tell—Greek citizens discussing politics just before the election—a wounded London artisan hiding from the King’s soldiers in a garret, and telling his shelterer the true story of Wat Tyler’s rebellion—a French peasant just before the Revolution, and his son who has been reading a strange book by that man Rousseau in which it is declared that there is no such thing as the Divine Right of Kings....
“Mathematics as an organized creative effort centering around real planning and building and measuring and calculating....
“Geography—a magnificent voyaging in play all round the world and in reality all round the town and surrounding countryside.... A scientific investigation of the natural resources of the community, its manufactures, exports and imports, discussed round bonfires in the woods by the committee at the end of a long day’s tramp, and the final drawing up of their report, to be illustrated on the screen by photographs taken by themselves.... The adventure of map-making....
“(You get the idea, don’t you? You see why it is more real than ordinary education—because it is all play!)
“And all these delightful games brought together in grand pageants—instead of examinations!—every half year....
“That is what I mean.
“Making whatever teaching of art there may be, part and parcel with these activities—and using the school-theatre, if one exists, not to produce Sheridan’s ‘Rivals’ in, but as a convenience to the presentation of the drama of their own education; but in any case making all their world a stage, not forgetting that first and best stage of all, God’s green outdoors!