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Journal of Moral Education

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Theorising Drama as Moral

Education
Joe Winston
Published online: 03 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Joe Winston (1999) Theorising Drama as Moral Education,
Journal of Moral Education, 28:4, 459-471, DOI: 10.1080/030572499103016

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 Journal of M oral Education, Vol. 28, N o. 4, 1999

Theorising Dram a as M oral

Education
JOE WINSTON
U niversity of Warwick, UK
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A BSTRACT Although it is commonly assumed within schools that drama has a place within
moral education, there is very little theory or analysis to support the assumption. This article
sketches a theoretical framework to show how and in what ways drama can make a distinctive
contribution to the eld. Drawing upon Stenhouse (1975) it proposes a broad distinction
between moral instruction and moral induction and analyses drama s potential contribution to
both areas. In so doing, it draws links between the cultural practices of the theatre and those
of the drama classroom, analysing the moral potential of the dramatic experience through ve
theoretical lenses. These include the enacted nature of dramatic narrative; the association
between drama and the learning of rules; the communal function of drama as a public artform;
dialogue and dialogism in drama; and the relationship between emotion, reason and moral
engagement in drama.

D oes dram a have a place in the m oral education of the young? If so, in what ways?
A nd what kind of moral learning does it engender? There is very little research or
scholarship that addresses these questions directly, which is surprising as there is
evidently a widespread assumption in schools of a connection between dram a and
m oral education. Consider the following list of exam ples drawn from actual class-
room practices.

A group of 6-year-olds is in a corner of the classroom , which has been set up

as the cottage belonging to Red R iding Hood s grandm other. T he teacher, in
role as the old woman, tells the children how ill she feels. After discussing
what they can do to help, the children tidy the cottage, write a shopping list
and do the shopping for her.
A Theatre in Education Company perform s a play for a group of 8- and
9-year-olds. It is ostensibly about a girl accused of being a witch but is really
about the victim isation of those who are in som e ways different.
A group of 11-year-olds dem onstrates the com m itm ent, co-operation and
autonom y necessary to devise and rehearse a play as an extra-curricular
project.
Through role play and improvisation, a class of 14-year-olds explores som e of
the dilem mas facing a social worker attem pting to help the young hom eless.
A class of 15-year-olds creates a T heatre in Education piece to illustrate the

ISSN 0305-724 0 (print)/ISSN 1465-387 7 (online)/99/040459-1 3

1999 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
 460 J. W inston

possible social effects of a young person s involvem ent with illegal drug-tak-
ing. It is perform ed in local feeder prim ary schools.
A n A-Level class studying Richard III considers how, despite his evil deeds,
R ichard is able to capture the audience s sym pathies.

A cursory reading of the list rem inds us of the range of experiences provided in a
drama curriculum and som e of the com mon them es explored within it. Children
m ight im provise or work from script; they m ight invent their own work or study play
texts; they might create drama, perform it, read it or watch and respond to it; they
m ight work physically, through representation, or through talk. W hatever form the
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work takes, it will com m only explore m oral dilemm as, injustices of various kinds and
will consider the im plications of speci c hum an actions within a range of ordinary
and extraordinary situations. In term s of both form and content, then, the exam ples
above are indicative of a social approach to m oral education. However, exam ples
alone, although they illustrate practice, do so without broadening or deepening our
theoretical understanding as to how or even if drama brings anything particular
of itself into the m oral education curriculum .
The little that has been written in theoretical support of the connection between
drama and m oral education has tended to be partial and partisan in nature, often
arguing for a particular approach to dram a teaching (usually the one practised by the
writer) rather than considering the issue in its broadest param eters (see, for exam ple,
Slade, 1993) . A welcome exception to this trend is a recent essay by Jonathan Levy
(1997) . Levy draws upon historical and philosophical perspectives to look at two
related questions: how did our predecessors im agine that theatre might help form a
m oral child, and m ight the notion be true? I shall refer to Levy s essay throughout
this article but m y own agenda, although related, addresses broader issues. By using
the term drama rather than theatre, I am embracing not only the world of plays and
perform ance from the perspectives of playwright, actor and audience but also the
related educational practices of extem porary im provisation. T hese approaches have
developed and expanded over recent years into a subtle idiom , capable of engaging
students in the theatrical event by blurring the distinction between actor and
audience through various degrees of participation[1]. M y aim is to draw upon the
cultural practices of dram a, particularly those of western dram a, and to relate them
to the broad range of drama practices current in educational settings, in order to
provide som e theoretical responses to the questions posed at the beginning of this
article .
Before beginning a detailed analysis of these practices, however, it will help to
m ake a few distinctions as to the different types of curriculum experience dram a as
m oral education m ight address, and for this I draw upon Stenhouse (1975).
Stenhouse argued that education in school necessarily consists of four distinct
processes: training, instruction, initiation and induction (p. 80). Training is con-
cerned with the acquisition of skills and its results can be assessed by capacity in
perform ance. M oral training is not a term in general use today in mainstream
schooling within liberal societies but its success m ight be gauged by the effects upon
children s habits, attitudes or behaviour[2]. Instruction is concerned with the passing-
 Theorising Drama as M oral Education 461

on of inform ation and its aim is the retention of this information. The teaching of
m oral codes and practices, a knowledge of the Ten Com mandm ents or of the
Q u O ran could all classify as moral as well as religious instruction. Initia tion is
often associated with the hidden curriculum and is concerned with the passing-on of
social values and norm s to which the school com m unity aspires. Induction is the
m ost elusive process to assess, as it is concerned with the passing-on of particular
thought system s so that students can understand, interpret and m ake judgem ents for
themselves. For m any teachers of m oral education in contemporary, liberal societies,
this would be the curriculum aim with which they m ost readily identify and it was
very m uch the approach prom oted by M cPhail s Lifeline Project in the United
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Kingdom (M cPhail et al., 1972) . However, as Stenhouse pointed out, its learning
objectives are the m ost open-ended of all; for induction is successful inasm uch as its
outcomes cannot be exactly predicted. The four categories, in particular the distinc-
tion they suggest between moral instruction and moral induction, will serve as reference
points during our investigation into how drama can offer distinctive contributions in
the service of m oral education. The trail along which we shall pursue this investiga-
tion will be signalled by headings that attem pt to highlight those characteristics
unique to drama both as an art form and as a curriculum subject; and we begin with
a consideration of the m ost complex of these, the nature of dram atic narrativ e.

D ram a as Enacted Narrative

T he relationship between stories and the conveyance of m oral lessons is probably as

ancient as the form of storytelling itself. W hether it be the parables of Jesus, the
H indu tales of the Ramayana and the Panchatantra or the Su tales of M ulla
N asrudin, stories have traditionally been used to provoke m oral re ection, suggest
codes of behaviour or challenge accepted m oral wisdom . Recent years have wit-
nessed a re-invigorated interest in the place and im portance of narrativ e story form s
for the development of the moral im agination. Particularly in uential have been the
fem inist writings of Gilliga n (1982 , 19 88), the neo-A ristotelian theories of M acIn-
tyre (1981 ) and N ussbaum (1990) , the cultural perspectives of Bruner (1986 , 1990 )
and Bakhtin s theory of dialogism (1981) . All share a belief that m orality is located
in the social sphere and that particularity , context and cultural speci city are
essential when attem pting to understand and explain the moral life. Allied to this is
a rejection of the universalist, modernist principles characteristic of neo-Kantian
m oral theory with its em phasis on rationality and a hierarchy of moral universals
com m on to all peoples at all times. This approach was, of course, m ost clearly
celebrated in the work of Kohlberg (1971) . A lthough it would be too simplistic
and in som e cases plainly wrong to label these theorists as postm odern they
strike a chord with postm odern discourse, with its m istrust of universals, objectivity
and rationality and its em phasis on difference, particularity and am bivalence. Post-
m odernists share a preference for narrativ e as the best way of transform ing moral
experience into m oral knowledge; only narrativ e can capture what Bruner describes
as the vicissitudes of hum an intention (1986 , p. 16) conveying a sense of the
m essiness of the m oral life as it actually feels in lived experience.
 462 J. W inston

Of course, not all form s of narrativ e conform to the postm odernists preference
for dialogism , where no view is incontestable and m oral knowledge is dem on-
strated through a capacity to respond sensitively to the am bivalence of individual
circum stances[3]. A use of stories with such an open m oral agenda could evi-
dently support the process of induction into m oral knowledge, where the em phasis
would be placed on developing students abilitie s to reach their own inform ed moral
judgem ents. Stories with more closed agendas operate rather as moral instruc-
tion presenting role models for em ulation, or illustrating the right course of
action when faced with a com mon dilem ma, or inculcating shared values and moral
codes. H indu tales such as the story of Savitri, Victorian fairy tales, accounts of
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inspirational lives found in prim ary school assem bly books: m any such stories are
com m only used for m orally didactic purposes.
W ithin the traditions of the theatre and within schools today, we can nd
dramatic narrativ es which present instructional agendas in various form s. N ot all
need be as simplistic as those com m on in the 19th-century theatre, criticised by
Strindberg as a pauper s bible, offering moral lessons in primary colours for the
uninstructed (cited by Levy, 1997, p. 68). Theatre in Education companies, such
as the UK-based Catalyst, regularly perform plays for the purposes of drug edu-
cation, aim ing to provide accurate information about drugs and their potential
physical and social effects. Although they avoid overt didacticism , they are careful to
steer clear of controversial m oral m essages. M any examples of dram a lessons are
docum ented which state as their aim a change in students attitudes with regard to
issues of race, disability or social injustice (see, for example, H all, 1988). These tend
toward instruction or even training, as they work within a closed agenda, aiming
to prom ote speci c liberal values such as tolerance in the face of sensitive social
issues. There are, however, exam ples of dram as with a moral edge that clearly strive
for a m ore inductive agenda. The theatre of Bertolt Brecht arguably presents us with
exam ples of both tendencies. In some plays, particularly in earlier works such as H e
W ho Said Yes: H e W ho Said No, his aim was clearly to teach the audience certain
m oral and political truths as he saw them. However, in what are generally accepted
as his best plays The Life of G alileo, for instance he presented stories with m ore
open agendas, em phasising the com plexity of the human condition rather than
urging a didactic M arxist agenda.
Dram atic narrativ es m ay be, in essence, no different from written or literary
narrativ es in term s of their potential to be presented for instructional or inductive
purposes. If there is something distinct in the moral experience these narrativ es can
provide, we must look beyond their content or stated aim s at the form they take.
W hat m arks out a dram atic narrativ e most clearly from a written narrativ e is that it
is enacted. As an audience to such enactm ents, we witness them before our eyes
rather than in our imaginations; and as active participants in a dram a class, we have
the opportunity to assist with such enactments. In either case, and by exam ining the
situations of audience and participants in turn, it can be argued that good drama can
heighten the intensity of the m oral experience.
First there is our experience as m em bers of an audience. W atching a dram a, we
are subjected to a sensorial impact absent from the printed page or an oral telling.
 Theorising Drama as M oral Education 463

T here are costum es, colours, real people, real objects, a succession of visual im ages
that unfold before us accom panied by words, music, sound effects; a pistol shot
m ight be followed by a cry of grief and a cadence of notes played on a piano.
T ogether they can serve to intensify the narrativ e s im pact: we see an act of injustice
or brutality and are m oved to anger or to pity; we are drawn into the acute moral
dilem m as felt by the characters and understand their confusions. This intensity is
due to the variety of languages or sign system s that dram a has at its disposal.
Particularly signi cant to the m oral experience are the visual languages upon which
the dram atic narrativ e can draw. Visual signs have an ability to im part information
beyond the verbal, to directly address those parts of our brains that make sense of
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visual/spatial or kinaesthetic m eanings[4]. W hen the visual and aural languages

re-enforce one another, they are able to stir our cognitive and em otional capacities;
in A ristotelian term s, they stim ulate our orectic potential, our natural propensity to
relate to and feel for others. This fusion of thought and feeling and its essential
other-relatedness is crucial for an appreciation of the m oral power of dram a and I will
return to it m ore fully later. However, it is im portant to note at this point that its
potential is dependent upon the multiple languages that constitute the resources for
m aking dram a.
The second crucial aspect of the dram atic experience is that, as an audience, we
witness a unique act of transformation in tim e, space and human presence. In
accepting to see the stage, for exam ple, as the Rom an forum, the time as over 2000
years ago and the actors as conspiratorial R om an senators, we not only subm it to an
artistic convention but, in doing so, we endow these three properties of theatre with
added weight, added signi cance. The result is that they exercise a power over us,
m ost evident with regard to the charismatic force many actors are able to exert. In
m oral term s, in their acts and in their dem eanour, they becom e potential role
m odels: hence the heat generated by debates over depictions of violence and other
m orally dubious acts on stage and screen. Crom well s puritans understood this
aspect of dram a all too well, dubbing theatres as places of the esh and closing
them all down. The Jesuits, on the other hand, understood that the charisma of the
actor could be harnessed to portray m odels of virtue, that the devil need not have
all the best parts. If the people in the dram atic space gain in moral power, so too do
the objects in that space. Even the most everyday objects can becom e sym bolically
charged when subjected to the dram atic gaze, resonating m eanings that they seldom
convey in our everyday lives. Consequently, a large chair in the m iddle of the stage
with a lone gure upon it represents m ore than a throne and a king; such metaphors,
as Iris M urdoch rem inds us, carry a m oral charge (1970, p. 77). T hus the im age
m ight speak of the loneliness of ultim ate responsibility, the arrogance of power or
the corrupt achievem ents of blind ambition.
It is, perhaps, the dram atic transformation of time that brings with it the greatest
potential for m oral impact. D ramatic tim e is elastic; moments of re ection may be
dwelt in and lengthened and whole days, m onths, even years be om itted altogether.
N arrativ e becom es patterned into plot, with what Hitchcock de ned as the boring
parts of life left out (see Levy, 1997 , p. 68). The result is, as Beckerman states, the
patterns that are blurred in life are de ned in the theatre (1979 , p. 40)
 464 J. W inston

and this de nition not only m akes the m oral dilemm as m ore acute, or the
signi cance of actions m ore apparent, it also adds a teleological intensity to the
central moral concerns. In Suzanne Langer s words, the dram atic present becomes
lled with its own future and dram atic individuals become m akers of this future
(1953 , p. 307). D ram a brings a singular coherence to past, present and future
action; we see m otives, deeds and their consequences with a simultaneity and clarity
that is denied us in lived experience. This sim pli cation of life need not render it
sim plistic; rather, it helps to m ake it com prehensible by being a simpli ed analogue
of com plex audience concerns (Beckerm an, 1979 , p. 30). In other words, it can
sharpen the audience s appreciation of the com plexity of individual m oral lives.
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W hen performing, rather than watching, dram a there are sim ilaritie s but im -
portant differences in the moral potential of the experience. Levy points to the
strong educational power of repetition and, as its corollary, the power of m em oris-
ation especially vivid and enduring when the m em orizer is physically active and
affectively engaged as, for example, in acting (1997 , pp. 67 68). He speculates
that the experience of ction, when it is actively lived through by an actor in a play:

could, and perhaps already does, becom e the raw data for both moral belief
and m oral action for the actor adds body and vocal m em ory to the
lm of memory recorded on the mind (1997 , p. 70).

Like Stanislavsky (1980 , Ch. 9) we m ight include the im portant addition of

em otional mem ory, where actors are called upon to nd analogous em otional
experiences within them selves to understand and convey the affective life of the
dramatic character.
M em ory plays less part in the im provised dramatic activities of the classroom as
opposed to the staged perform ance. However, the skilful teacher can m ake the
drama as mem orable for the participants by using sim ilar strategies to the playwright
in structuring the progress of the dram a through the lesson. Through affective,
physical involvem ent, the participant in a classroom dram a can be drawn into the
ctional world and engage with the moral life being explored within it. W ithin this
world, the transformations of tim e, space and presence and an effective use of the
dramatic languages can serve to intensify the m oral experience. N one of this need
im ply a loss of a conscious sense of self; rather, it requires a willing engagement by
the self in the ctionalised experiences of others.
For younger children, in particular, there is a further potential for moral
learning when enacting dram atic narrativ es. If we look at the exam ple of the children
playing in the grandmother s cottage at the beginning of this article, they are not
sim ply m oved to feel sorry for the old wom an but are encouraged to nd an
appropriate form of action to respond to their emotions. In becom ing active, moral
agents they are being given the opportunity to practise the virtues, which A ristotle
saw as essential training for the m oral life. It is, of course, easier to act in a ctional
world than in the real world; but, in a sense, that is the point. The teacher can use
the dram a to scaffold m oral learning by offering the children opportunities to try out
appropriate virtuous actions within the security of the m ake-believe.
 Theorising Drama as M oral Education 465

D ram a, Play, Rules and Conventions

D ram atic activity, culturally shaped as it is, em erges from the hum an propensity for
play. According to Schechner, we can de ne play as `free activity where one
m akes one s own rules (1988 , p. 13) In Freudian terms, it is essentially a private
behaviour whose bene ts are psychological, but as soon as play activity becomes
social in nature, as in gam es, sports and theatre, then there is a need for participants
and observers to agree upon rules to guide the encounter. The individual can no
longer invent and discard rules at will; if they are to change then this change must
be negotiated. Piaget (1932 ) made much of how, through games and play, children
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learn to respect rules and come to understand the ways in which they can be
changed. This he saw as fundam ental to the developm ent of m oral behaviour. W hen
G illiga n pointed to the fact that his observations were directed at the behaviour of
boys rather than girls, she noted that girls tended to be less interested in rules;
instead, they enjoyed playing in smaller groups, replicating the social patterns of
prim ary hum an relations. If boys play developed a sense of legal justice, that of girls
developed a sense of em pathy (1981 , p. 11). She proposed these distinctions as
tendencies rather than as universals, but the two patterns of play share two essential
features relating play, rules and m oral developm ent. These are hinted at by Sennett:

Through self-distanced play the child learns that he can work and rework
rules, that rules are not im mutable truths but conventions, under his (sic)
control Im mediate grati cation, imm ediate retention, imm ediate m as-
tery are suspended (1993, pp. 321 32 2).

T he rules of social play require those involved to submit to negotiated agreem ent
and to distance the self from the play activity; both are dependent neither on
external, purely social forces, or on internal, psychological forces. T heir sphere is the
social, connective space between the self and others.
Drama is a social art from and therefore can only take place under certain terms
of agreement or conventions. This holds true for those watching a play, those involved
in its performance and students in the classroom. In each case the success of the
experience depends upon self-distancing and the submission to convention. It can be
seen to ful l the programme for moral education favoured by D urkheim (1973),
emphasising the need to develop a respect for discipline, com mitment to group
endeavour and an appreciation of the requirement for social and m oral conduct. For
the theatre audience there is a need to contract into a code of social behaviour; in
a pantomim e children will be expected to provide vocal assistance, in a more
naturalistic play they will need to remain silent in order to understand the plot
or the unfolding relationships between the characters. In either case there is an
opportunity to appreciate that rules can be enabling rather than restrictive, that they
are essential for the spectacle to be appreciated. For those involved in the production,
the self-discipline and com mitment to team work are great during the rehearsal
process and throughout the performance, actors, technicians and stage-hands all
have particular contributions to make, upon which the success of the production
depends. Of course, the lessons can be mislearned; an actor m ight learn rivalry,
 466 J. W inston

sel shness and arrogance hence the need, in school contexts, for teachers who
appreciate the m oral potential of the educational agenda that dram a can offer.
Turning to the classroom , we can see that dram a activities provide a link
between the different kinds of play activities noted by Piaget and Gilliga n. U nlike
sport, where the rules of, for exam ple, soccer or baseball are given, non-negotiable,
the conventions of drama are exible and uid, open to negotiation and change.
Students m ight work in pairs or in groups; they m ight im provise or present a
tableau; they m ight rehearse a piece for performance or role play to explore a
problem . This uidity of convention foregrounds the fact that rules can indeed be
negotiable and enabling; and, when working within a convention, the outcom es are
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still open-ended and dependent upon further negotiation. A gain, unlike gam es and
sport, the play activity of dram a has content that re ects the social world, perm itting
the kinds of em pathic exploration, the other-relatedness, that G illiga n noted as m ore
characteristic of girls play:

It fosters the developm ent of empathy and sensitivity necessary for taking
the role of the particular other and points m ore toward knowing the
other as different from the self (1981, p. 11).

D ram a as a Public, Comm unal Artform

O ur values, including our m oral values, are not at base the results of individual
choice. In Bruner s terms:

They are com munal and consequential in term s of our relations to a

cultural com m unity They becom e incorporated in one s self-identity
and, at the same tim e, they locate one in a culture (1990, p. 29).

T he stories that a com munity shares, and particularly those stories that gain m ythic
status, serve to con rm those values. In educational terms, such stories instruct the
young and help initiate them into the m oral values of the culture into which they are
born.
Stories in perform ance, either in ritualistic or dram atic settings, often share this
instructional agenda. T he Roman Catholic m ass, the Ram ayana at Ram lila, and
even long-running T V series such as Dixon of Dock G reen, are all possible exam ples
of a public telling of stories which help bind a com m unity together in a sense of
shared values. In democratic societies, however, the very public nature of dram a has
also given it the potential to becom e an arena where these values can be held up to
scrutiny, to critical inquiry or to reinterpretation, particularly when historical and
cultural change render them con ictual or open to challenge. This democratic, civic
function of dram a was particularly noticeable in its western origins in A thens.
N ussbaum describes the setting of the open, Greek amphitheatre as a place where
the audience was as visually aw are of its fellow citizens as m uch as it was of
perform ers and of the m yth being enacted. She writes:

The whole event took place during a solem n civic/ religious festival, whose
 Theorising Drama as M oral Education 467

trappings m ade spectators conscious that the values of the com munity were
being examined and comm unicated. T o respond to these events was to
acknowledge and participate in a way of life and a way of life, we should
add, that prom inently included re ection and public debate about ethical
and civic m atters (1990 , p. 16).

T hus A eschylus in the O resteia prom oted the rationality of A thenian legal justice
over the tribalistic code of fam ily vendetta; whereas Euripides in The Trojan W omen
exposed the political and moral hypocrisy of an A thenian state that had treated the
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inhabitants of M elos with such barbarity for refusing to join the war with Sparta. In
both cases, the public and open forum of the theatre com bined with the intensity of
the dramatic narrative to create a provocative platform for political and moral
debate.
Dram a still has the power to provoke, to m ove, to engage us in a critical
re-exam ination of our social and m oral values. A fam ous exam ple in the United
Kingdom from the 1960 s is the case of Cathy Come H ome, which exposed the plight
of the homeless and led directly to political reform and the establishm ent of the
charitable organisation Shelter. To harness this potential of dram a in schools is to
use it for inductive purposes, as it im plies a questioning or a scrutiny of comm unal
values already supposedly agreed to. It can pose the question how far are we, as a
com m unity, prepared to live up to what we say we believe in? or, as Levy points
out, it can be used to explore hard cases , where the m oral dilem m a is particularly
acute. This use of dram a is often favoured by experienced classroom practitioners
but it is dif cult to do with integrity. In such dram as there should be no easy answers
and it is the job of the teacher to ensure that students appreciate the dif culty of the
choices open to the characters in the ction. Often, however, teachers have their
own value agendas in play, their own favoured resolutions, and they can manipulate
the dram a so that students unknowingly follow the moral agenda they have set.
H owever, any process of m oral induction within a school context will of necessity
exist within certain value param eters acceptable to that school. M oral induction
does not aim to create individuals absolutely free to choose their own moral
attachm ents; as the earlier quote from Bruner reminds us, these attachm ents must
relate to a cultural com m unity. Inductive education aim s to help individuals think
and act autonomously, within a fram ework of m oral values acceptable to a demo-
cratic and pluralist society. At the same tim e, it recognises that within such a society
ethically problematic issues will present themselves in new and com plex ways,
with the accom panying need for com m unities to re-evaluate their shared moral
values. In both cultural and educational settings, there is a public and social
role for drama in the way it was seen by Raym ond W illia m s; as a practical index
of change and creator of consciousness (1961 , p. 299). In other words, drama can
articulate problem atic issues of value, brought about by social change, and bring
them into urgent, open debate. In so doing, drama can m ake a com m unity
conscious of the new and contingent form s by which values im pinge upon their
m oral lives.
 468 J. W inston

D ram a, Dialogue and Dialogism

A ccording to Levy, our predecessors saw the power of dialogue as one of the
principal m eans that theatre m ight help form a moral child (1997, p. 67). M oral
issues are often explored in the classroom through structured dialogue of various
kinds; debates, role plays and simulations, for example. Colby (1987) , however,
argues that these m ethods usually fail to engage students fully in the predicam ent
under study as they encourage entrenched attitudes and rational detachm ent. For
the purposes of m oral education, he argues, good dram atic dialogue, whether
im provised in the classroom or scripted for the stage, must be reasoned with passion
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and be genuinely open-ended; in other words, it m ust fully engage those participat-
ing but the issue in focus must remain m orally am bivalent. In fact, good dramatic
dialogue does m ore than sim ulate talk or argument between two or m ore people,
differing from other form s of dialogue inasm uch as it functions primarily as action
affecting how the characters see themselves, their situation and crucially their future
actions. Consequently, in the nal scene of Ibsen s A Doll s H ouse, N ora discovers
what she thinks, feels and intends to do with her future through her passionate
dialogue with her husband. The choice she m akes to leave her children as well as
her husband is as m orally am biguous for a contem porary audience as it was
provocative and challenging for audiences 100 years ago.
Dialogue used in this way would appear, at rst sight, to be the essence of
Bakhtin s theory of dialogism, with no one perspective allowed to dom inate, set or
close the m oral agenda. Yet Bakhtin was dism issive of dram a, seeing it as an
essentially monological idiom . Colin Counsell helps us appreciate why this m ight be.
In a live perform ance, he points out, we m ay watch the perform ers but they, too,
watch us and, powerful as they are within the transform ed stage spac e, they are able
to judge us and act upon our responses. T he social pressures to conform to the
responses of both audience and actors are very great and Counsell concludes:

Theatre provides a mechanism for group discipline and uni ed in-

terpretation whose ef cacy outstrips that of any other artform (1996 , p.
22).

T his is as true for teachers who work in role with their classes, as D orothy Heathcote
did, taking parts within the drama, shaping it from within the action. Rather than
offering genuinely dialogised experiences, as som e claim it does, this m ethod of
working can serve to re-enforce the teacher s own moral agenda, which is rather
Bakhtin s point.
There are ways, however, in which dram a can construct a dialogised narrativ e.
W e m ust remember that dram a operates with m ultiple languages, that visual and
oral/aural signs can operate in a dialogised relationship with one another. In
addition, there is the potential for such a relationship between the double identities
of the actors, both as perform ers and as characters in a ction. Brechtian theatre
m akes m uch of these possibilities. An actor can comm ent on the character he
represents, with words or simply through a knowing smile to the audience, as well
as through that character; the cartoon image of a capitalist glutton can be projected
 Theorising Drama as M oral Education 469

against a screen while the actor perform s as a genial em ployer. The intention here
is to signal not only the presence of the author but also his partisanship (Counsell,
19 96, p. 10 5). In this way, Brechtian theatre seeks to encourage a com plex moral
seeing but one that is above the stream rather than in the stream (1996 p. 106).
Brechtian practices have had a widespread im pact on current educational dram a and
m any practitioners seek to neutralise their own value agendas, to act as facilitators
in moral issues in the spirit of Stenhouse s Hum anities Curriculum Project (1976).
H owever, genuine dialogism requires m ore than a rem oval of the teacher s values
from the dram atic picture; it m ust include processes that openly declare what these
values are towards the issue under scrutiny, without seeking to privileg e them in any
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m oral or dram atic sense. Just how this can be achieved, and to what extent it is
educationally desirable for different groups of students in term s of age, social and
cultural circum stances, is very far from clear.

Em otion, R eason and M oral Engagem ent in Drama

I have already emphasised the power of dram atic narrativ e to stir em otions de ned
as other-regarding but it is im portant to consider the cognitive power of these
em otions and the particular contribution they can m ake to m oral learning[5].
Culturally and intellectually, we are still suffering from the legacy of the Enlighten-
m ent if we understand emotion and reason as polarised opposites: the cool, calcu-
lated rationality of the head contrasted with the raw, untramm elled em otions waiting
to well up from deep within us. One of the educational legacies of this outlook has
been a distinction between the sciences and the arts based on a perceived contrast
in em phasis between thought and feeling. However, as Best has pointed out:

em otional feelings are not separate from or opposed to cognition and

understanding, but, on the contrary, em otional feelings are cognitive in
kind, in that they are expressions of a certain understanding of their objects
(1992, p. 9).

It is evident that I can learn em otion and that em otion can inform reason. I can learn
to fear my boss s temper, for example, and this fear can be a perfectly rational
reaction to the violence of his tongue and the power he has over me. Sim ilarly ,
reason itself can be guided by em otion; som e of the best, m ost convincing argum ents
put forward by politicians are marked by their passion rather than their coolness.
The importance of this for an understanding of the m oral life is the fact that to
learn particular virtues is to learn particular emotional responses. In the words of
M acIntyre:

Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways but to feel in
particular ways M oral education is an e ducation sentim entale (1981 ,
p. 149).

M oral action is determ ined as m uch by feeling as it is by reason and the two operate
together to inform agency, but the particular emotions that dram a is able to stir are,
as I have already indicated, other-regarding; and the virtues associated with these
 470 J. W inston

emotions, for example sympathy, benevolence, generosity of spirit, are among those
de ned by Carr as virtues of attachment or other-regarding attitudes (1991 , p. 200).
Through their active involvement in drama, as audience or participants, young people
can learn to know pity, admiration, indignation, repulsion by feeling them in particular
contexts. They can thus learn, through participation and discussion, to recognise these
feelings and the kind of social actions that inspire them. This is why Levy suggests that:

an extensive education of the feelings would produce better deliberators

on moral issues, because their well of inform ation is deeper and wider than
mere thought can provide (1997 , p. 73).
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A s better deliberators it is possible just possible that we might produce better

actors in moral situations.

Conclusion

In this essay I have not attempted to argue for a particular philosophy of moral
education or for one way in which drama should be used to implement it. Rather, I
have provided theoretical evidence to show how drama can be used in speci c ways and
have attempted to analyse its appropriateness for achieving particular purposes within
a broad agenda for moral education. There are areas I have not covered the role of
comedy, for example, or the dramatic traditions of minority cultures, or the distinctions
between the experience of live drama compared with lm and television. I am aware
that the examples I have provided are few but, by concentrating on a theoretical
agenda, I hope to have made a case for taking drama seriously as an area for further
research and analysis within the eld of moral education. Culturally this is increasingly
important, as we live in what William s has de ned as a dramatised society (1975),
where young people, in particular, learn most of their stories in dramatic form from TV
and video; and where the genres that present factual and ctional stories are becoming
increasingly blurred. Therefore the Clinton Lewinski affair presents itself as a
grotesque episode from a soap opera while, simultaneously, the lm Primary Colours is
interpreted as a more or less factual account of Clinton s presidential campaign. Within
such a society, increasingly globalised in its nature, it is surely signi cant for educators
to develop an understanding of how drama can in uence the moral formation of the
young. As Robinson argues, we need to appreciate that it is through the arts and these
days increasingly through drama that the de ning values and sensibilities of the
social culture are shaped, challenged and de ned (1997, p. 20).

Correspondence: Joe W inston, Lecturer in D ram a, Institute of Education, University

of W arwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; e-m ail: k j.a.winston@ warwick.ac.ukl .

NOTES

[1] See Neelands (1990) for the best sum mary of the structural approaches teachers comm only use to
engage students in such work.
[2] It was, however, used by Sadler in his report on a M oral Education sym posium held in London,
published in 1908 . See M usgrave (1978, p. 109).
 Theorising Drama as M oral Education 471

[3] For an excellent sum mary of Bakhtin s theory of dialogism see Kelly (1992).
[4] The signi cance of visual signs for an ethic of care is emphasised by Noddings (1984, p. 2). The
theory of m ultiple intelligences is, of course, promoted by G ardner (1983).
[5] The ideas explored in this section are dealt with m ore thoroughly in Chapter 5 of m y book Dram a,
Narrative and M oral Education, 1998 (London, Falm er).

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