Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Donald L. Cleary, Jr.

Reviewed work(s):
Education in Drama: Casting the Dramatic Curriculum by David Hornbrook
Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 114-115
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333257
Accessed: 17/07/2009 12:28
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114

BookReviews

curriculum that is truly based in the relevant disciplinary approaches to the

arts.
E. F. Kaelin
Florida State University, Tallahassee
EDUCATION IN DRAMA: CASTING THE DRAMATIC CURRICULUM,
by David Hornbrook. London: The Falmer Press, 1991, 179 pp., paper.
Any educator would benefit by the warning about what David Hornbrook
claims has happened to dramatic education in Great Britain. He argues that
it has largely been "child-centered and psychological in its orientation, not
aesthetic" (Editor's notes, p. x). The value of the psychological uses of
drama in education notwithstanding, Hornbrook defends dramatic education on the basis of performance alone. His cry is for theater versus drama,
performance versus process, culture versus the child, and stage space versus open space (p. x). He maintains that education should value the development of designers, directors, actors, writers, and critics within a social,
political, and cultural context. He argues that "role-playing"-though valuable as a tool for development of personal skills, dealing with stress, building confidence, and developing social skills-has become the "all embracing substitute" for theater (p. 8). What apparently began with the Cox
Committee and was carried into practice via the statutory Order of English
and by the nonstatutory guidance of the National Curriculum Council, led
to the condition that Hornbrook feels compelled to amend. Thus, his book
is dedicated to the task of rescuing and securing those aspects of drama
which he finds lacking in education (p. 10).
Hornbrook contends that since the dramatized story is integral to any
cultural system, performance-based cultural dramatizations are needed to
help "explain the world and to show us how we should live" (p. 40). He
suggests three kinds of texts as appropriate to this goal for use in the classroom: (1) the stage text-that is, a play; (2) the electronic text-any form of
drama given performance by technical means; (3) the social text-improvisations based on those aspects of life that bear characteristics of dramatic
performance, for example, the court-room, the interview, the wedding, and
so forth. Additionally, any curriculum is made complete through reception
and interpretation by those who watch and listen to performances of these
three kinds of texts.
Hornbrook offers the nonspecialist a practical methodology for putting
these ideas into practice. First, he breaks the production process into a series of logical steps-investigating,
experimenting, designing, directing,
editing, rehearsing, managing, and performing-and provides a brief description of the kinds of activities involved in each. The reception process is
divided similarly into impact, design, actions and performances, music and
effects, management and pace, and interpretation. Indeed, this methodical
approach would be a useful one to the nonspecialist director/teacher and is
perhaps the strength of this work. Unfortunately, Hornbrook has dedicated
only one third (fifty pages) of his short volume to this methodology. This

BookReviews

115

would fulfill only the initial needs of the nonspecialist who might wish to
apply Hornbrook's ideas.
Other chapters include a brief discussion of the history of dramatic education in England and an incomplete look at dramatic and aesthetic theory
as applicable to his argument. His brief discursion into "what art is and is
not" (pp. 20-21) contributes little to his argument as a whole and tends to
sidetrack the main issue. His astute observation that arts education should
concern itself with the "social or political context of artmaking" (p. 19) is
never fully developed, and allusion to it is made only by inference in subsequent chapters. The profundity of his observation would seem to demand
further discussion.
Written for educators in Great Britain, the non-British reader will find
this work beneficial if he or she is willing to sift through, or ignore, the use
of numerous acronyms-like HM1, HMSO, TGAT, GCSE, and CSE-which
are meaningful only to educators in the United Kingdom. What a shame
that this book's editor has not accommodated the international reader as
well.
Donald L. Cleary,Jr.
Ohio University-Zanesville
THE SYMBOLIC ORDER: A CONTEMPORARY READER ON THE ARTS
DEBATE, edited by Peter Abbs. London: The Falmer Press, 1989, 300
pp., paper.
THE CLAIMS OF FEELING: READINGS ON AESTHETIC EDUCATION,
edited by Malcolm Ross. London: The Falmer Press, 1989, 355 pp., paper.
These two anthologies represent almost the last flourish of educational debate that managed to persist in the eighties. Sadly, at this remove, they are
beginning to look outdated and very nearly irrelevant. This doleful statement is made in recognition of the hard reality that direct government intervention in English education, in the form of the legislated, mandatory
National Curriculum and in all forms of assessment and examination,
seems to be rapidly approaching totalitarian levels. Since the 1988 Education Act that made the National Curriculum obligatory in schools, we have
had three, or is it four, Secretaries of State; each has introduced modifications or yet more reviews of the content or teaching of this or that subject. It
is not surprising that the views of teachers throughout every sphere of education have become jaundiced and many simply "go through the motions"
of meeting the requirements of the National Curriculum, for there is every
likelihood that some aspect-the content, the assessment, the composition
of the National Curriculum Council, or its Chair-will be changed; all these
things have happened several times already.
Over the past decade or so it has become inevitable that papers by
English educators have been peppered with references to reports, directives, and populist criticisms arising from government pressure in one form
or another. Increasing centralization has been such that even a range of