A course in drama was organized as an elective English offering for Juniors and Seniors of the University High School in 1917.The class meets five times a week, and upon completion of the year's work the pupils are granted one full unit of high-school English credit. The purpose and function of the course were set forth by Mr. Theodore B. Hinckley, who first offered it, in an article' published in 1918, as primarily an attempt to give greater unity than is usual to a portion of the high-school curriculum in English. It was conceived that frequently a year of high-school English instruction offers for the intellectual nourishment of the pupil a mixture of isolated classics, excellent in themselves, but unrelated either to one another or to any of the phenomena of current life as boys and girls are already beginning to observe them. The drama, it was believed, offered a unique opportunity for presenting a well-organized body of literary material which would at one and the same time serve as a "mirror of social thought, ethical standards, and the better class of popular reactions to life," and give "room for a vital introduction of poetry and of the classic, romantic, and realistic points of view." It was expected, also, that the course would take care of the popular desire to give "shows," rendering this pupil activity educationally effective and cultivating among the pupils sounder standards of taste in art and literature than are generally prevalent.The success of the course seems fully to vindicate the confidence placed in it by the first instructor and to justify its continuance in the curriculum. As reorganized for the year 1920-21, the objectives of the course were twofold. It is assumed that the 'Theodore B. Hinckley, "Drama and the English Course." School Review, XXVI (June, 1918), 423-37.
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