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The children's theatre is the only teacher of morals and conduct and
high ideals that never bores the pupil, but always leaves him sorry when
the lesson is over. And as for history, no other teacher is for a moment
comparable to it: no other can make the dead heroes of the world rise
up and shake the dust of the ages from their bones and live and move and
breathe and speak and be real to the looker and listener: no other can
make the study of the lives and times of the illustrious dead a delight,
a splendid interest, a passion; and no other can paint a history-lesson
in colors that will stay, and stay, and never fade.
It is my conviction that the children's theatre is one of the very, very
great inventions of the twentieth century; and that its vast educational
value--now but dimly perceived and but vaguely understood--will
presently come to be recognized. By the article which I have been
reading I find the same things happening in the Howland School that
we have become familiar with in our Children's Theatre (of which I am
President, and sufficiently vain of the distinction.) These things among
others;
1
. The educating history-study does not stop with the little players,
but the whole school catches the infection and revels in it.
2
. And it doesn't even stop there; the children carry it home and infect
the family with it--even the parents and grandparents; and the whole
household fall to studying history, and bygone manners and customs and
costumes with eager interest. And this interest is carried along to
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