Work In Progress for a Project on Engaging Adult Learning Communities in Using the Principles of Theater Arts to Prepare Them to Create Social Change, Phase D
Governing Question: What are the steps that I can take to engage the adult learning communities in using the principles of theater arts to prepare them to create social change?
Proposition 1: Theater provides methodologies that can support how adult learners become better prepared to become engaged in social change. Concepts such as characterization, point-of-view, methodological belief, use of physical movement and props, and dialogue can be adapted to situations that are encountered in everyday life and therefore are not simply tools that drive the theater performance industry but also reflect social realism.
Counter-proposition: Overwhelmingly, theater is perceived primarily as a source of entertainment or as a “soft skill” and will not be taken seriously as a medium of authentic foundation of education. Because much education addresses the learning that is meant to support decision-making and problem-solving, these are often part of situations that require well-defined “right” answers, and theater methodologies don’t insist upon this, so they may not be useful.
Counter-counter-proposition: Theater is perceived as primarily entertaining because it often represents a “reward” to the passive observer that is earned for doing other “real” work, but using theater methodologies in education takes a different form anyway because teachers, learners, and educational administrators can use the methodologies in numerous ways that form a foundation of interpersonal interaction, communication, originality, and creativity. There needs to be more emphasis on these as achievable milestones in education alongside those reflecting technical skills.
Proposition 2: Social change happens when all people have an opportunity to have ownership and participation in the processes that enable it, and people must be able to form a common understanding about the issues that they mean to address.
Counter-proposition: Because those most affected by broad social challenges lack power and influence in the first place, social change must be enacted through political means and relies on government action to create any lasting change. A social challenge such as poverty is extremely far-reaching and deeply problematic, so any educational approach to addressing the issue will require decisions by a representative group, since it is logistically difficult to have direct involvement from large numbers of people.
Counter-counter-proposition: Reliance on government and political action to create social change causes a disconnect between the decision makers and the members of the community; it permits a certain degree on dependence on those who are only indirectly involved in the specific issues that they are trying to address. True change must start at the individual level through education and motivation to become personally involved in the changes that will affect the individuals' own lives. This individual change must then be used to build local-level perspectives on social change.
Proposition 3: A key purpose of adult education is that people, through learning experiences, will be more able to address the most immediate and critical issues affecting the basic needs that are common to all people, not just themselves, such as justice, safety, and good health.
Counter-proposition: In our current economic climate, a people need to have the professional skills to be competitive in a global economy. Adult education needs to become an innovator of training toward best practices in business, engineering, and medical and scientific research. Although awareness of social issues is important, the emphasis of adult education must be in the preparation of people to have these critical skills.
Counter-counter-proposition: Social change needs to be viewed as a more fundamental goal of a community of people because the most pressing social issues compound over time and become more complicated and devastating if not addressed. Therefore, adult education must teach toward social change as an underlying purpose, and this needs to be the reason for scientists, businesspeople, engineers, etc., to actually be doing the work they do. Because education toward social change is more fundamentally critical to a strong society, this must be encouraged at a level equal to or even greater than education toward economic power. Further, because education toward social change is relevant to all people no matter what other occupation they take, this needs to be a common thread of one’s education all the way through adulthood.
Proposition 4: The theater techniques that are appropriate for teaching social change-oriented skills are accessible to all people, easy to learn, and draw upon abilities that are natural and enjoyable for people to express, regardless of their level of specific academic experience. People are capable of understanding and using these techniques in their own education and also capable of becoming developers of new techniques that can be effecting in teaching that prepares one with the skills needed for social change.
Counter-proposition: Although both theater and adult education may seem extremely familiar to most people, particularly in North American culture, it takes specialized training in theater to understand concepts such as directing, developing characters, using dialogue effectively, and establishing in oneself a new point of view. Likewise, it take specialized training in education to understand concepts of andragogy/pedagogy, transformational education, organizational management, and curriculum development, design, delivery, and evaluation. Those with such training are much more capable of leading learning experiences that have valid effects.
Counter-counter proposition: Using the techniques of theater in adult education is not meant to produce professional actors or activists, but rather to find the techniques that generally help a person to learn how to take on different perspectives of themselves and others, use empathy to understand difficulties of others that lie outside of their own lives, and explore different notions of reality that may help to stimulate imagination and create vision for an approach to addressing social issues that doesn’t yet exist and may be obscured but that might be possible. From this point of view, the use of theater is not intended to create a skill that leads to performance for others but instead leads to a more inward change to reflect upon the reality of one’s own perception of the world, understanding of the social structure in which one lives, and the actions that one can take to create change of that structure that most directly influences the individual and the immediate community.