PSYCHODRAMA AND THE NEW ROLE OF THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL

Abstract

Our school has 550 elementary school pupils. Once every year we give what we call a Festival, for want of a better name. It is really a
Social Studies project. We have dramatized the Industrial Festivals of our State in miniature on our stage. (You have no doubt heard of the Shrimp Festival at Biloxi, Mississippi, and the Pilgrimage at Natchez, Mississippi.) Another time we gave, "What Goes with Your Tax Dollar?" Still later we gave "Americans All," and "The 100th Birthday of Meridian." This year we are giving Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms of America." This latter one gives us a chance to stress freedom from fear and the psychological reaction to fear. We will bring our particular fears out and represent them on the stage in figures and color. Perhaps we shall use the witch for superstition or fear of darkness. Each time we create a pageant, children, teachers, and parents do research, think, and build it gradually into a thing of dramatic beauty. It is a result of the efforts of the total community. In 1959, we won a Freedoms Foundation Award for this work.