Susan Hillyard argues that educational drama provides a unique way for students to fully engage with lessons. She defines educational drama as using theater techniques but with different aims than traditional theater - it is for all students, not just a talented few, and focuses on personal development rather than performance. Drama requires nothing but students and teachers, allowing lessons to be truly student-centered rather than focused on resources or standardized outcomes. By its very nature, drama puts students at the center and creates a learning experience closer to real life than other subjects.

1. Towards a more Dramatic Education
Author: Susan Hillyard B.Ed.(Hons)
The plenary is opened with Susan singing this extract:
This moment is different
From any before it
This moment is different
It’s now
And if I don’t kiss you
That kiss is untasted
I´ll never, I´ll never
Get it back
The walls of this room
Are different
From any before them
They are now
They are now
The air that you breathe
Is different from any before it
It is now
It is NOW
Incredible String Band
¨This Moment¨
from the album ¨I Looked Up¨ 1970
(Mike Heron)
What is more special to a human being than a magic moment? Of what are our
fondest memories made up? What can be more uplifting for a student, what
greater respect can you pay to a student than to say:
¨This moment is now, it is ours and we only need us. And when this
moment is over and we have experienced something true together, just
using ourselves, then we have both changed. This moment is now. ¨
For some children in some schools the only time real life meets life in the
classroom head-on is during educational drama. Drama is life and life is drama.
Only through our sadness do we appreciate our happiness, only through
movement do we understand stillness, only through darkness are we shocked
by light, only after illness do we value our health. Drama uses the whole child
in the whole classroom with the whole teacher to express the human condition
without resource to resources.

2. You may be wondering how drama can be so simple when it needs costume,
lighting, sound effects, stage management, props, script and so on. To be
honest, I wondered about that when I was a student but only because I was
confusing drama with theatre. The debate continues, but in my twenty odd
years of teaching in five countries I have constructed a reality which has, in my
humble opinion, served my students well.
For me, and I want to insist that this is truly a personal definition, educational
drama has its roots in theatre techniques but its aims and objectives are
worlds apart. Theatre, as an academic subject, is an Art whereas drama is a
mainstream subject for all in the regular curriculum. Theatre is for the talented
minority and therefore can justifiably be extra-curricular while drama is for all
without threat or fear, explored in a safe environment without written tests of
memorised facts or diagrams. Theatre demands an audience, a script, a critic
and competition is fierce. Drama gently asks for a group of people to work
through a process, searching for expression of the human condition. It is the
only subject which combines, in the classroom, movement, voice, intellect,
emotion, co-operation, imagination, creativity, empathy and intuition. What
could be more WHOLE ?
Drama is for all, without discrimination. Drama is for self development leading
to creativity in using your own words and your own ideas. Perhaps its greatest
feature is its temporary, fleeting nature which relates far more closely to the
fleeting nature of life experiences. Drama is experiential, experimental - it does
not pretend to be pure art. It does not need to be recorded, written, evaluated.
We have become so bound up in educational resources that we have forgotten
the myriad of experiences the child can bring to the learning situation. We
have taken the child out of his/her context and transplanted him/her in an
artificial conglomeration of so called educational devices which have little to
do with the content schemata in his/her head. We must not and cannot deny
the world of technology and publishing and visual aids but the child must come
first. Drama is essentially the only subject that allows one to do this. To
conduct an effective, quality drama lesson the teacher needs nothing but an
empty space, a group of students, and a wealth of ideas.
Nothing else is essential to the effective completion of the lesson. This is the
wholeness of drama. Frightening? Yes. Why? Because the demands on the
teacher are greater than in any other subject.
No desks to hide behind.
No books and pens imposing extraneous discipline and restrictions.
No chairs to keep the wriggling bottoms still.
No teacher-student void to maintain the traditional distance.
No right and wrong.
No textbook to keep us all on track together.

3. You may argue that any subject can become student-centred if the teacher
chooses to make it so. I agree, to a degree, but no subject lends itself so
readily as does educational drama. Simply put, there is no drama without a
student. The student is the very essence, nothing else is required. In other
subjects the student often sits on the periphery, secondary to the essential
materials; the lesson plan, the teacher’s schedule, the syllabus, the predicted
outcome, the necessary previous step before the next stipulated step.
Attempts by students to encourage learner-centredness are often cut off in
their prime being seen by the teacher as red herrings, irrelevancies, stalling
techniques, interruptions, carefully planned manoeuvres by dissident student
bodies bent on delaying the carefully laid curriculum. But teachers need to
learn to listen, to respect, to empower, to develop the rich wealth of
experiences each individual brings to the classroom environment.
What is learner-centredness ? It is a philosophy, just as whole language is a
philosophy, made up of complex layers of implications for teachers and
students alike. It accepts the learner as the starting point of the learning
process.
The ramifications are enormous but nevertheless true to life and this is why it
is not only whole but wholesome.
The traditional teacher in the teacher-centred classroom using traditional
materials in a traditional style creates an environment not found anywhere else
in the real world. As Yetta Goodman so succinctly puts it,
¨There is no field - not medicine, not law, not any field - that has as its
notion that everybody is going to be operating in the same way, at the
same point in time.¨
Thus the complex layers unfold. The teacher, the students, the environment,
the content, the support systems need to work in a philosophical harmony
bringing together all the elements layer upon layer. To the outside observer
these elements are not obvious, for they make a unified whole and here lies
the core of the enigma. Frank Smith delves into the complexities admitting,
¨Our starting point is at the threshold of a shadowy realm of enigma and
paradox, the human brain.¨
We are dealing with uncertainties, this is our only certainty and the teacher, as
a professional, must learn to adapt to new strategies as research brings to
light untold truths.
Let us look momentarily at these complex elements. Let us fragment that
which cannot, in reality, be fragmented but which we as investigating
professionals must attempt to analyse. We begin with our major resource - the
student. But we also begin by making a whole set of assumptions about the
wholeness of the teacher. Why do we need the term learner- centredness ?

4. Only because many classrooms through bureaucracy, expediency, the rigours
of politics, and time, have become, in contrast, teacher- centred.
The establishment, in its desire for credibility has structured its regimes to
present a façade of efficiency. An apparent peace, a hierarchy of values, a
record of desirable activities, an organization which is visually and auditorily
acceptable for the educational institution. What an easy life for the teacher -
no contingencies, no interruptions, no questions, an aseptic tank of hypocrisy.
But how easily we fall into the trap. It looks good. It sounds good but does it
do anybody any good?
The whole teacher is able to twist and shake to the rhythm of each individual
believing in all sincerity that a teacher- centred classroom is mere surface. She
does not relinquish control but exercises, at every juncture, her professional
judgement and integrity accepting positively all the problems which must
inevitably arise from collaboration which replaces authoritarianism. It is not
easy; it takes many years of patient practice.
If you believe in this moment and can accept a classroom with nothing more
than time, space, students and teachers then go ahead and plan your steps for
a more dramatic education.
This moment is different from any before it
This moment is different
It’s NOW.
Transcript of plenary first delivered by Susan Hillyard at Longman´s First
Argentine Conference on Teaching English organised by Oriel Villa Garcia
2/4/94
From an article. by Susan Hillyard, first published in
”ELT News & Views” Year Number 3, Sept.96