Education II

Today, before I got to tell them what we thought education meant to a drama education, in a typical, annoying, first day of school kind of way we asked them to tell us. Here's what the new frosh said...

• To teach the artist about a professional approach
• Gaining experience
• Getting rid of bad stage habits
• Knowledge
• Technical knowledge in itself
• Vocal work
• Developing tools
• General education: sciences, English, history (need to build upon for interesting theatre)
• The first step toward developing a good career
• A strong base to build on
• A variety of different skills
• Personal growth
• Developing ourselves
• Learning from your mistakes, finding out what works
• Research
• Nurturing environment
• Safely experimenting
• Supportive and firm working environment
• Discussion
• Exchange of ideas
• Constructive and open criticism
• Sharing of ideas
• It is important to have an open and curious group of students
• Learning from your peers what you do not already know
• Learning from faculty and other students
• Learning possibilities
• Teach you new ways of thinking, finding different ways to solve problems
• It's important to have an open mind and throw away any old feelings
• Education must be ongoing
• History of drama - it's evolution

So from my list they hit skills training pretty hard. They also got ideas which is nice because my observation is that this group is usually skills obsessed. They also touched artistic home - supportive environment as a group. Those to me seem to be the big clusters. They mention other things, some even on my list, but these three were the ones where there was nearly universal agreement.

The rest of my list? I started talking about our responsibility to provide opportunities for learning and their unique position attending a conservatory within a university. I gave them instructions to look for inter-disciplinary opportunities in and out of the theatre building and told them they need to take ownership of their education to best take advantage of the opportunities they find - or make.

We talked a little about the idea of a partnership. I got my biggest laugh for explaining that they did not find us standing in a funny hat with a name tag standing behind a register, and that they weren't here to get an order of "learn," and that in all likelihood we would not ask if they wanted fries with that. That this is a partnership, a collaboration, and that if we were lucky we would learn from them as well as them learning from us.

I used the quote Kevin likes to use:

It is the responsibility of university to put together talented people and duck.

That's actually a pretty fair description of our program, especially at the higher levels.

It was at this moment, which I have to say was further along than last year, when I ran out of time. Someday I must craft this into a tighter package. So I rushed to add the following thoughts:

• we want to develop an appreciation of the form
• we need to foster a posture of professionalism
• we want to encourage their curiosity and creativity, their courage and ability to risk
• that we can't teach them everything

For the last bit I pulled out the explanation of the development of an expert, that you go from not knowing what you don't know, to knowing what you don't know, to knowing what you know, to not knowing what you know. In an environment where we couldn't possibly teach them everything that we should build in them the personal awareness to know when they don't know, and to give them the tools to seek out that knowledge on their own - learn how to learn.

All in all a fairly good experience for all.