小说搜索     点击排行榜   最新入库
首页 » 经典英文小说 » Were You Ever a Child? » XVIII. The Drama of Education
选择底色: 选择字号:【大】【中】【小】
XVIII. The Drama of Education
关注小说网官方公众号(noveltingroom),原版名著免费领。
“BUT why—in the name of all that is beautiful!—why the Theatre?”

Ah! Who uttered that agonized1 cry of protest?

He comes forward.

“It was I who spoke2. Do not, I beg of you, as you love Beauty, have any truck with the Theatre. Leave it alone—avoid it—flee it as you would the pestilence3! I know what I am talking about!”

And who, pray, are you?

“I am an Actor!”

Well, well!—this is rather curious.

“Not at all! Who should know better than the Actor the dreadful truth about the Theatre—that it is the home of a base triviality, the citadel4 of insincerity, the last refuge of everything that is banal5 in thought and action!”

Really, the Theatre seems to have no friends[Pg 125] nowadays except the professors who teach play-writing in the colleges! But I think we should hear what our friend the Artist has to say in its defence.

The Artist. “There is nothing wrong with the Theatre except what is wrong with the whole of modern life. Our newspapers are base and trivial, our politics are insincere, and the products of our slave-system of production have a banality6 which Broadway could scarcely surpass. In all these fields of effort, as in the Theatre, the creative spirit has surrendered to the slave-system. But in the Theatre, and in no place else in the world, we find the modes of child-life, of primitive7 creative activity, surviving intact into adult life. What is costume but the ‘dressing-up’ of childhood, the program with its cast of characters but a way of saying ‘Let’s pretend!’—what, in short, is the Playhouse but a house of Play? It is all there—the singing and dancing, the make-believe, the whole paraphernalia8 of child creativity: it is true that the game is played by children who are not free to create their own dreams, who must play always at some one else’s bidding, half children and half slaves! But—and this is its importance to us—the Theatre is the place where[Pg 126] the interests of the child meet and merge9 into those of the adult. It is the natural transition between dreams and realities. And it is thereby10 the bridge across the gulf11 that separates art from the world.

“Let me explain. When I use the phrase ‘The Theatre,’ I am not thinking of the dramatic arts in any restricted and special sense. For the Theatre, as the original source of all the arts, the spring from which half a hundred streams have poured, into the separate arts of music, dancing, singing, poetry, pageantry, and what not—the Theatre in its historic aspect as the spirit of communal12 festivity—is significant to us not as the vehicle of a so-called dramatic art, separate and distinct from the arts which go to make it up, but rather as the institution which preserves the memory of the common origin of all these arts and which still has the power to unite them in the service of a common purpose. In the Theatre, as in the child’s playing, they are not things alien from each other and isolate13 from life, but parts of each other and of a greater thing—the expressing of a common emotion.

“So when I speak of making the Theatre a part of the educational system in the interest of art and artists, I mean to suggest a union of all[Pg 127] the arts in the expression of communal purposes and emotions through a psychological device of which the Theatre, even in its contemporary form, stands as a ready-to-hand example.

“I cannot be sufficiently14 grateful to the Theatre for continuing to exist, in however trivial or base a form. Suppose it had perished for ever from the earth! Who would be so daring a theorist as to conceive the project of bringing together the story-teller, the poet, the musician, the singer, the dancer, the pantomimist, the painter, in the co-operative enterprise of creating ‘one common wave of thought and joy lifting mankind again’? Who, if such a thing were proposed, would have any idea what was being talked about? As it is, however, I can point to any musical comedy on Broadway and say, ‘What I mean is something like that, only quite different!’

“Different, because the communal emotions which these artists would have joined themselves together to express would hardly be, if they were left free to decide the question themselves, the mere15 emotions of mob-anxiety, mob-lasciviousness and mob-humour which are the three motifs16 of commercial drama. No, you have to pay people to get them to take part in that dull and tawdry game! When they do things to suit themselves,[Pg 128] as they sometimes adventurously17 do even now, it is something that it is more fun to play at. As free men and women they cannot help being artists, they must needs choose that their play shall be a ‘work of art whose rhythms fulfil some deep wish of the human soul.—’”

“Just a moment! Some one, I think, wants to ask a question.—Louder, please!”

“I said—this is all very well as a plea for a Free Theatre, but what has it to do with Education?”

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—”

[Pg 129]“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 confiscate18 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, joyous19, 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 picturesque20 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[Pg 130] 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 investigation21 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 illustrated22 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 delightful23 games brought together in grand pageants—instead of examinations!—every half year....

“That is what I mean.

“Making whatever teaching of art there may[Pg 131] 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!

“No, I say, I do not want to put a theatre into every school—I want every school to be a Theatre in which a Guild24 of Young Artists will learn to do the work of the world without ceasing to be free and happy.

“I hope I have succeeded in making myself clear?”

点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 agonized Oz5zc6     
v.使(极度)痛苦,折磨( agonize的过去式和过去分词 );苦斗;苦苦思索;感到极度痛苦
参考例句:
  • All the time they agonized and prayed. 他们一直在忍受痛苦并且祈祷。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
  • She agonized herself with the thought of her loss. 她念念不忘自己的损失,深深陷入痛苦之中。 来自辞典例句
2 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
3 pestilence YlGzsG     
n.瘟疫
参考例句:
  • They were crazed by the famine and pestilence of that bitter winter.他们因那年严冬的饥饿与瘟疫而折磨得发狂。
  • A pestilence was raging in that area. 瘟疫正在那一地区流行。
4 citadel EVYy0     
n.城堡;堡垒;避难所
参考例句:
  • The citadel was solid.城堡是坚固的。
  • This citadel is built on high ground for protecting the city.这座城堡建于高处是为保护城市。
5 banal joCyK     
adj.陈腐的,平庸的
参考例句:
  • Making banal remarks was one of his bad habits.他的坏习惯之一就是喜欢说些陈词滥调。
  • The allegations ranged from the banal to the bizarre.从平淡无奇到离奇百怪的各种说法都有。
6 banality AP4yD     
n.陈腐;平庸;陈词滥调
参考例句:
  • Neil's ability to utter banalities never ceased to amaze me.每次我都很惊讶,尼尔怎么能讲出这么索然无味的东西。
  • He couldn't believe the banality of the question.他无法相信那问题竟如此陈腐。
7 primitive vSwz0     
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物
参考例句:
  • It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
  • His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。
8 paraphernalia AvqyU     
n.装备;随身用品
参考例句:
  • Can you move all your paraphernalia out of the way?你可以把所有的随身物品移开吗?
  • All my fishing paraphernalia is in the car.我的鱼具都在汽车里。
9 merge qCpxF     
v.(使)结合,(使)合并,(使)合为一体
参考例句:
  • I can merge my two small businesses into a large one.我可以将我的两家小商店合并为一家大商行。
  • The directors have decided to merge the two small firms together.董事们已决定把这两家小商号归并起来。
10 thereby Sokwv     
adv.因此,从而
参考例句:
  • I have never been to that city,,ereby I don't know much about it.我从未去过那座城市,因此对它不怎么熟悉。
  • He became a British citizen,thereby gaining the right to vote.他成了英国公民,因而得到了投票权。
11 gulf 1e0xp     
n.海湾;深渊,鸿沟;分歧,隔阂
参考例句:
  • The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
  • There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。
12 communal VbcyU     
adj.公有的,公共的,公社的,公社制的
参考例句:
  • There was a communal toilet on the landing for the four flats.在楼梯平台上有一处公共卫生间供4套公寓使用。
  • The toilets and other communal facilities were in a shocking state.厕所及其他公共设施的状况极其糟糕。
13 isolate G3Exu     
vt.使孤立,隔离
参考例句:
  • Do not isolate yourself from others.不要把自己孤立起来。
  • We should never isolate ourselves from the masses.我们永远不能脱离群众。
14 sufficiently 0htzMB     
adv.足够地,充分地
参考例句:
  • It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
  • The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。
15 mere rC1xE     
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过
参考例句:
  • That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
  • It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。
16 motifs ad7b2b52ecff1d960c02db8f14bea812     
n. (文艺作品等的)主题( motif的名词复数 );中心思想;基本模式;基本图案
参考例句:
  • I try to develop beyond the old motifs. 我力求对传统的花纹图案做到推陈出新。 来自辞典例句
  • American Dream is one of the most important motifs of American literature. “美国梦”是美国文学最重要的母题之一。 来自互联网
17 adventurously 92b99d4f5c8ee03350f1e091f51387c8     
adv.爱冒险地
参考例句:
18 confiscate 8pizd     
v.没收(私人财产),把…充公
参考例句:
  • The police have the right to confiscate any forbidden objects they find.如发现违禁货物,警方有权查扣。
  • Did the teacher confiscate your toy?老师没收你的玩具了吗?
19 joyous d3sxB     
adj.充满快乐的;令人高兴的
参考例句:
  • The lively dance heightened the joyous atmosphere of the scene.轻快的舞蹈给这场戏渲染了欢乐气氛。
  • They conveyed the joyous news to us soon.他们把这一佳音很快地传递给我们。
20 picturesque qlSzeJ     
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的
参考例句:
  • You can see the picturesque shores beside the river.在河边你可以看到景色如画的两岸。
  • That was a picturesque phrase.那是一个形象化的说法。
21 investigation MRKzq     
n.调查,调查研究
参考例句:
  • In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
  • He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。
22 illustrated 2a891807ad5907f0499171bb879a36aa     
adj. 有插图的,列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词
参考例句:
  • His lecture was illustrated with slides taken during the expedition. 他在讲演中使用了探险时拍摄到的幻灯片。
  • The manufacturing Methods: Will be illustrated in the next chapter. 制作方法将在下一章说明。
23 delightful 6xzxT     
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的
参考例句:
  • We had a delightful time by the seashore last Sunday.上星期天我们在海滨玩得真痛快。
  • Peter played a delightful melody on his flute.彼得用笛子吹奏了一支欢快的曲子。
24 guild 45qyy     
n.行会,同业公会,协会
参考例句:
  • He used to be a member of the Writers' Guild of America.他曾是美国作家协会的一员。
  • You had better incorporate the firm into your guild.你最好把这个公司并入你的行业协会。


欢迎访问英文小说网

©英文小说网 2005-2010

有任何问题,请给我们留言,管理员邮箱:[email protected]  站长QQ :点击发送消息和我们联系56065533