Playwrights are important for education value
I often ask young Kenyans to tell me how many playwrights whose books they read, apart from the set book they sat for KCSE.
I pose this question to high school leavers as well those pursuing university education regardless of the careers they are undertaking.
Nearly all of them—over 90 per cent—say they did not get a chance to read any play other than the set book they had for their English in KCSE. It does not make any difference whether the students went to the best secondary school in terms of availability of the best library collection of books in all genres and not in terms of performance in KCSE.
This is odd. This is because plays are part of literature and therefore a central part of the English curriculum. And an English curriculum, just like Kiswahili or a high school curriculum of any foreign or any language, is about complex texts that stretch the minds, intellects and souls of students.
The English language prides itself with having some of the greatest playwrights. Vision of the English curriculum is that students completing high school shall have a bowing acquaintance with a representative body of the works of some of these playwrights.
The four years of secondary education is long enough to help students taste the rich repertoire of plays that were written by outstanding artists.
This background not only prepares them to understand and appreciate the play under study for KCSE English, but also broadens their mind to appreciate life as seen by the playwrights. The exposure also creates the foundation for the students to nurture critical, analytical, and imaginative skills or temperament that plays impart on those who read them with understanding.
The intellectual furniture and discipline that appreciation of the great plays can give to any ambitious student complements what the students find in mathematics, engineering, medicine, Information Technology, law, Journalism, and economics, to name but a few of the disciplines and careers in the market.
A study of plays contributes to education and literacy. They teach us about humans, the springs of human action and revulsion, about human motivation and psychology.
In historical plays, we get lessons in leadership and government. A reading of Sophocles Aeschylus, Euripides, Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Henrik Ibsen, Robert Bolt and a host of other great playwrights’ books teach readers many things. They have the ability to enable readers to understand issues about ambition, character, courage, integrity, tenacity and confidence.
The books teach them about psychology of the people, and leaders—the challenges, burdens, perfidy and loneliness that attends the lives of leaders. A careful reading of great plays influences the way we think and feel about our own lives and encourages us to take a hard look at ourselves, our values, and behaviour.
One of the things that a reading of plays does is to develop the communication skills of the reader. Potential politicians and leaders of institutions unconsciously absorb the manner of speaking that they “see” in some of these plays.
Plays also help develop empathy and compassion in the hearts of those who read and study them with patience—whether the reading is for examinations as in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, for a University Degree in Literature or simply for leisure and to while away time.
The reading of plays is no child’s play. It is a serious exercise that calls upon and expands our minds. Plays as much deal with enduring problems that men and women grappled within in their own souls and with others.
It deals with love and hate, justice and injustice, honesty and dishonesty in human dealings. It is the insights thereof that leaders of men and women need to govern or guide society and institutions.
— The writer is communications officer, Ministry of Education
