Global therapy: Advocating for a dramatherapeutic approach to formal education

This article addresses the question of how we might set about building a kinder, more empathic world to counter the violence and inequality that characterizes so much of contemporary experience. Given that the school figures so prominently in the lives of most young people, the core suggestion is to align teaching much more closely with approaches traditionally associated with dramatherapy. For this to happen, schooling needs to be replaced by education where the experience of the learner is central to the process of learning and where dialogue is the principal means of transmission. Drawing upon the pedagogical imperatives of Paulo Freire, this approach to education is in tune with recent discoveries concerning the neurological structure of the human brain, which have demonstrated that we are wired for empathy. However, empathy alone is value neutral. An educational experience needs to offer opportunities to practise critical empathy, following the theatre aesthetics of Bertolt Brecht. Stories are at the heart of this experience since they are the most powerful vehicles for the practice of empathy and distance. We are a storytelling species and, through the stories we tell, we can develop our capacity for kindness without which it is impossible to imagine a better world.