The dramatic instinct in children

I. The Nature of the Dramatic Instinct — Its Expression in Early Childhood — Its Expression in Middle Childhood — Its Expression in Later Childhood

II. The Educational Value of This Instinct — The Moral Value of This Instinct — The Inspirational Value of This Instinct

Two thirds of all play is dramatic play. Those who believe in the educational value of play must, therefore, not neglect this phase of it.

The child who engages in dramatic play reproduces and enacts, and so realizes the ideas around him. He so focuses imagination that what would otherwise be vague pictures are made real by his own activity.

“Dramatic work,” says Gesell, “organizes the child’s thinking. The simple and imperfect images of childhood are vivified and crystallized by being transformed into the movements which express them, and a child emerges from dramatic representation fortified in his mental imagery.” A child who tries to “act a horse,” as Mrs. Gruenberg tells us, will be much more apt to notice all the different activities and habits of the horse than a child who observes passively.

“The child,” says Dr. Gesell, “does not smile when he is glad, but fairly dances with joy. He does not shed a few tears when he is unhappy, but kicks and shakes with his grief. The opportunity to make use of his whole body in the expression of his feeling, which he is compelled to do in dramatic interpretation, will serve to equalize and conserve his moral strength. Emotional expression, although dependent upon instinct, must not be left to chance. Instinct and emotion are as capable of organization as motor and mental processes.”

One writer (Anne Throop Craig) suggests the use of the dramatic impulse instead of the usual school gymnastics as a means of relaxation, since it involves the use of the child’s whole body. “Let them act a little play,” she says. “Let them make it up on the spur of the moment.”

What we remember best is that which we learned dramatically. “The fact acted out is the fact remembered,” says Mrs. Herts. What we remember out of books is that which we have in some fashion ourselves reproduced. Our memories of the Bible even are chiefly those related to some dramatic event, such as the ritual of the church, a revival or some dramatic method which was used incidentally or purposefully in our Bible study. Letting the children act out such stories as those of Moses, Joseph and Samuel, as is being done in many of our church schools to-day, not only arouses interest but helps to fix the knowledge of the Bible’s wonderful hero stories firmly in their minds.

“That which the child understands,” says Gesell, “must bear an intimate and personal relation. Just as he must take into his hands the concrete thing he studies, and by physical contact understand it, so, to understand thought, emotion, character, he must assimilate them, lose himself in them, and become for the time being that thing which he interprets. Through such interpretation the child touches heights and depths which otherwise might never enter into his experience. Life becomes larger as he learns to lay aside his own limitations and put himself in the other man’s place. He need not wait to enlist in the army to become a soldier, nor carry a real gun to acquire a martial step. He need not do wrong himself in order to know the remorse of wrongdoing.”

A child who merely reads about a foreign people gathers only a dull catalog of external facts, which he soon forgets; but the child who puts on a foreign costume and endeavors to imitate the actions of its owner begins to get from his experiences the feeling which the other has. “Recently I went into a practice school connected with the University of Chicago,” writes President Faunce, “where I saw the children gathered round a teacher who was reading to them the poem of ‘Hiawatha,’ and their eyes were wide with wonder. Then they went over into the Field Columbian Museum and saw the materials of Indian life, the tents and the wampum, the feathers and the moccasins, and all the utensils of the Indian household. Then they returned and modeled in clay an Indian village, with Hiawatha at one end of it, and all over it the marks of the creative imagination.”

In contrast, Dr. Faunce says: “I too learned ‘Hiawatha,’ side by side with Mr. Colburn’s ingenuities. I could spell the name of every tree in Hiawatha’s forest, but would not have known one of them if I had seen it. I could pronounce the name of every beast on the American continent or in Noah’s ark, but knew nothing about any one of them.”

Says O’Shea: “Every personality he assumes stretches his own in one direction or another, enriches it perhaps, or at least broadens it. Through personation one gets the point of view of others; he discovers how it feels in a broad sense to do as they do, and is put in a way to sympathize with them. Again, when the child creates an environment, and then reacts upon it, he is really pre-adjusting himself to that environment.”

The child who engages in dramatic expression not only visualizes more clearly, but more practically. “A child with imagination,” as Mrs. Gruenberg says, “can picture to himself what he is expected to do, and easily translates his instructions into action. To the unimaginative child the directions given will be so many words, and he cannot carry out his instructions so effectively.” This resourcefulness is important. It is the unimaginative child who is always wailing, “What shall I do now?” The child who plays dramatically can be whatever he likes, and have whatever he likes, and always has something to do. And in later life it stands to reason that it will be the men and women who have habitually seen with their imaginations, who have visualized unexpected situations, who will display “faculty” and effectiveness.

This is real education.

The dramatic instinct brings out a number of traits of very great value. It develops initiative and ingenuity and resourcefulness. It helps make clear the difference between the imaginary and the real. It helps one to acquire unconsciousness of self, grace of demeanor and the correct use of the voice. It develops the power of action in groups and of ready and unselfish cooperation. It relates itself to English, elocution, drawing, and shop work, and is as important in its inspiring effect upon craftsmanship, in the making of costumes, scenery, and stage effects, as upon the acting itself. The portrayal of scenes from polite life helps politeness, and to imitate a courteous character tends toward the habit of courtesy. “A book on manners and customs will be little used until the child needs the information which it contains to portray some character.”

An interest in literature may first be aroused through the stimulation of the dramatic instinct. Robert Browning, in his poem “Development,” tells how his father, by acting out with him the story of the Iliad, and then suggesting that he might himself find out more about it through reading such and such a book in the library, aroused in him the intense love of the classics which was his through life.

It has also an important part in helping to forecast a child’s future. “I fancy an individual standing hesitant at the center of a great circle, the circle of his possibilities,” says Mrs Howard Braucher. “One small amount of that circle, a part of his potential life, he actually lives—the dramatic instinct is the key which admits him to at least a glimpse of what the rest might have been.” Of what the rest may be, she might have said, because the full expression of the dramatic instinct has often inspired a child with courage to enter the entire circle of his possibilities.

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 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:

“We counted the months of careful, patient training well spent when it served to bring the soul of our boy of an East Side tenement into points of contact with the soul and spirit of the chivalrous young prince, and from these points of contact to stimulate him into action. What has the playing of the character of Edward done for this boy besides affording him some months of genuine happiness? It has recovered and strengthened his own will power through the stimulus of Edward’s will; the boy had lost and so found himself in the joy and sorrow of the young English prince. The proper direction and control of his dramatic impulse had brought him into such intimate association with young Edward, Prince of Wales, that the thrill of Edward’s valor will forever afterward be unconsciously a part of himself, for something struggling in his starved soul has demanded and received expression. In the last act of the drama, when the young prince, in the rags of Tom Canty, the pauper, makes sturdy claim to his righteous throne, it was good to see this youth of the streets raise his hand with natural dignity, and, when Lord Seymour, with selfish motive, would oppose him, cry out, ‘Hold, Lord Seymour, and stand not in the way when God brings right!’”

It is believed the occasional performance of even an unworthy character has a certain purgative moral effect. Referring to the influence of playing the unpleasant part of Minna in “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Mrs. Herts says: “A number of nice girls who had played Minna formerly had fallen into the error of wearing plumed picture-hats and transparent waists to business. One does not like to tell a nice girl that she cannot secure the respect of good business men while unsuitably dressed for her work. The social worker who, with the best intention, intrudes personal advice because those he desires to help chance to reside on lower East Broadway instead of upper Fifth Avenue merely displays poor taste and is inapt to alter a mistaken point of view in a matter so vital to all young girls as clothes. The use of dramatic instinct to stir the girl’s imagination to the realization that the quiet garments of Mrs. Errol clothe the body of a woman whose qualities of mind and soul the girl desires to emulate, while Minna’s gaudy apparel clothes the body of a woman whom the girl has grown to understand but not to admire, proved with us to be a very legitimate use of the primitive impulse to truly educational ends.”

“In taking a part in which there is evil,” adds Frederica Beard, “it is quite possible that a young actor will see the outcome of a bad deed, as it is not possible for him to see it immediately in life. He may discern the workings of conscience in the character he represents, or he may have to bear the consequences of wrongdoing. If neither of these things is depicted in the play, then the character is not one to be played by young people.”

“The development of expression through the right service of the dramatic instinct ... will serve to stimulate discrimination, a quick eye and hand and heart with added taste for the beautiful, while development in responsiveness to the best and noblest people and things of all the ages will create taste and discrimination in the choice of individual surroundings, deeds, actions, and ambitions” (Mrs. Herts).

Mr. Lee says that “the first really important shock that comes to a young man’s religious sentiment in this world is the number of bored-looking people around, doing right.” Perhaps our greatest moral task with young folks is to persuade them that it is not only wise to be good, but happy to be good. If we are going to do this, we must reveal to them larger sources of joy.

“So many of our children to-day,” Mrs. Braucher says, “are somehow missing the childlike fancy, the buoyant self-forgetfulness, which comes from living in a half-real world. Perhaps they are poor rich children with mechanical toys and so many opportunities to see stupendous productions of the old fairy tales behind real footlights that the home plays seem crude. Perhaps they are rich poor children who live so close to the pain and the burden and the specter that the airy forms of fairy life have quite flitted away. Or, perhaps, they are just normal healthy children whose childlike realism, for want of the suggestive touch of fancy, has shut out the dim fairy figures—whoever they are, wherever they are, do you want them to lose this unreal, very real part of their lives? Books and stories will help—will plant the seed—but only the appeal to the dramatic instinct will cause it to blossom as the rose.”

Dramatic play prevents the emotional nature from becoming inert, and thus keeps the possibility of joyousness forever alive. It retains the imagination and fancy that are so essential to perpetual youth. It is the only possible door to romance and mystery that will remain open for many. It satisfies the human craving to realize the meaning of life regardless of its environment. It is the best way to have life and to have it more abundantly.

Says Mrs. Herts: “A majority of young people as well as children experience a hunger of the soul to live out impulses denied expression in their personal lives. Eternal Personality restricts and shapes us into the limits of our environment. Youth chafes against such limit. The impulses of humanity stir beyond the reach of mere personality, time, and circumstance. Johnnie wants to be a pirate, Miss Smith a queen, young Harry a martyr. This is nature’s provision against spiritual isolation. This hunger of the soul for experience is as elemental a demand for nourishment as the hunger of the body for food. The dramatic instinct is an expression of this elemental hunger.”

Continuing she says: “It is the common, ordinary, free heritage of every child, unconsciously operative in every human being from the cradle to the grave. It is among the great basic forces whereby God shapes humanity.... It is the force which makes the soldier on the battlefield grasp his country’s flag, and raising it high above his head, cry out, ‘On to victory,’ even though that victory includes the death of his own body. It sustains the monk in his vigils, the statesman in his patriotism, the preacher in his pulpit.”

In short, it is the power by which we make real our ideals.

The strongest moral influence of the dramatic instinct comes in adolescence, when it shows itself in the form of aping the manners and copying the ideals of one’s personal hero. O’Shea gives much attention to this. He calls us to notice the fact that “children of all ages normally choose for their companions those of a dynamic nature, who are able ‘to do things.’ Persons of a static tendency, though ‘good’ and ‘respectable,’ are not commonly emulated by the young. In any community it will probably be found that men of action, whatever this may be—men who accomplish things—become dominant in the impersonations of the young.”

Cooley, discussing this particular point, illustrates it in an effective way. Speaking of the child’s love of action, he says that “his father sitting at his desk probably seems an inert and unattractive phenomenon, but the man who can make shavings or dig a deep hole is a hero; and the seemingly perverse admiration which children at a later age show for circus men and for the pirates and desperadoes they read about is to be explained in a similar manner. What they want is evident power. The scholar may possibly be as worthy of admiration as the acrobat or the policeman; but the boy of ten will seldom see the matter in that light.”

Now all this is dramatic. It indicates the strong tendency to copy those who are most easily copied, namely, those whose ideals and actions lend themselves, because of their vigor and theatric picturesqueness, to outward impersonation. The parent is performing the highest moral service to his children who can furnish them heroic dramatic examples, if possible by his own activities and career, or by entering heartily with them into dramatic play of such a character as to create the illusion of adventure, or by exposing them to wholesome persons of an age a little greater than their own who are either spectacular in act or dramatic in play.

III. Summary — References [2]

During childhood, boys and girls pass through three periods in the evolution of the dramatic instinct. Little children imitate people and animals in real situations, endeavoring to mirror the world as they understand it. Beginning at about the third year, they commence to create a play-self living in a play-world, and this power of making illusions, as the expression of the hunger to realize life to its fullest extent, lasts as long as people live.

From six to nine children are eagerly becoming acquainted with the world outside the home. The dramatic impulse is then expressed in the imitation of every occupation and custom known to them. The developing tendency to construct aids the dramatic play.

Parallel with this, perhaps at about the tenth year, comes the period when they begin to take pleasure in impersonating dramatic ideas to an audience. This expression of the instinct tends to fade away after adolescence.

The dramatic instinct is of great educational value. It helps the child to realize his world and organize his thinking. He remembers best what he has learned dramatically. It enlarges his experiences and enables him to put himself, both by knowledge and sympathy, in the other man’s place. It is an important factor in mastering literature and history and in becoming familiar with the spirit of other races. It is extremely useful in developing resourcefulness, and the capacity for meeting novel situations. It carries interest and enthusiasm into all school subjects and helps shape the child’s ideals for the future.

The dramatic instinct has a great moral value. It gives a wholesome outlet to a child’s energies; it develops unselfishness; it creates a sympathetic imagination; and it gives a child the opportunity to understand moral issues by having imitative experiences of them.

The dramatic instinct has great inspirational value. It carries fancy through life, is the only possible door to romance for many, and furnishes through hero-worship, the strongest possible incentives to keep noble ideals.

The final intent of the dramatic instinct is that it should minister to fullness of life.

We remember how Pollyanna, by finding something glad in every circumstance, succeeded not only in glorifying, but in actually transforming an existence that promised to be cheerless. This is what the dramatic instinct may do for us. Not only does it conjure up illusions in which it is charming to live, but it is so dynamic that it actually tends to change circumstances and helps reshape the world according to our dreams. The stodgy soul without vision squats in the midst of literal realities, but “the dreamer lives forever.”

THE AMERICAN HOME SERIES

NORMAN E. RICHARDSON, Editor

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