Today, on March 27, as we observe the World Theatre Day-2021, educational insitutions need to adapt threatre perform forms for educational purposes. Here, I reproduce my write-up created at Disha Foundation, Jaipur, titled "Pantomime works as effective tool for language development for children in age group three to five: Study", which goes as follows.
A pantomime is a dramatic edutainment and learning tool, in which a performer expresses meaning through gestures accompanied by music. Pantomime has a great educative value in the education of children in inclusive situation since it is related to brain education. It can be produced easily with with conventional and adapted rhymes. A gesture is pantomime is physiological stance to convey meaning. If used without music, pantomime is is viewed as an art of silence in which a character is portrayed through gestures, facial expressions, and physiological or body movements.
The study "Dramatic Arts and Pantomime as a Unique Supplementary Methodology to Teaching English to Children under Age of 5" by researcher Saleh Haqshenas amply illustrates the value pantomime for children in the age group 3 to 5 years.
The study combines 'pantomine drama' and 'children's self-engagement' for language development for improved working memory. The study has been done on 400 children between the ages 3-5 for teaching English. It was found that words are taught through easy dramatic movements and pantomime, a teacher can teach 4 words in 30 minutes to his/her student but if he/she wants to teach through the traditional audio-lingual method, it nearly takes up to 50-60 minutes to teach those 4 words.
Citing Chomsky , 1998, the author of study report, while stating that 'if teaching is not obeying a consistent and real theory and practicality, this may damage child ’s learning for a life time', writes that dramatic arts have been in the center of attention due to their multi-applicable functions and mostly as a tool for conveying literature and culture, yet, they do not wind up in drama and theatre and have recently been used in teaching English to children under age of 5 who are in the so-called 'critical period' when brain starts new and highly active functions.
The inset collage shows pantomime gestures of peaking, forgetful, disgust, quiet, settle down, idea, promise, kill, reading, sleeping, afraid and pray. A school teacher must have a gesture vocabulary of 100-300 words and more so by special educators, I think.
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