Who is going to kiss the Princess?

One of my favourite drama based lessons (attached below) is based on the story of the Sleeping Beauty. The story can be seen as an allegory of the human condition and raises awareness of the nature of consciousness.

The term ‘raising awareness’ is often used in teacher training. The aim of many lesson plans produced by techers I observe is to raise awareness of a specific grammatical structure, a lexical set or a sub skill. However what is rarely defined is how a learners’ awareness can be raised – indeed what is awareness anyway.

I look at teaching as a delicate balance between the forces of order and chaos. Order consists of the elements that we know (what we have control over), it is the lesson plan, the materials and handouts, the lesson stages and their sequence. It is based on our knowledge of the subject and teaching methodology. For teachers it is their armour which protects them from the unknown. However a lesson that is too ordered is like a chess match in which every move has been rehearsed in advance. On the surface it looks like a productive lesson with each sequence following the next but in reality nothing is really happening apart from pre-ordained sequences, certainly nothing is being learned by the teacher or the learners. Unfortunately many lessons do suffer from this over controlling teacher centeredness as teachers fear the unknown and over compensate with too much order. A life that is too ordered is a life spent unconscious.

Chaos on the other hand is the unknown. It is unpredictable and every lesson needs to have an element of risk to encounter the unfamilair and provide learning opportunities. It is only by entering the unfamiliar that we can experience new phenomena. Chaos occurs when in chess our opponent makes a move we hadn’t expected and suddenly we are in new territory and our previous experience and knowledge needs to be adapted. However unchecked chaos is simply anarchy, directionless and random, a lesson with no focus, aims or direction. There must be rules and order in proportion.

So how is this balance between order and chaos achieved? Well, I believe this is where the concept of awareness raising is important. It is consciousness that allows us to negotiate a balance. Consciousness allows us to negotiate meaning and enables us to make sense of the boundaries between the known and the unknown. Awareness raising allows us to open our eyes and understand what we are seeing. It is the mechanism that enables us to perceive both our vulnerability and our strengths in action. However awareness raising has its limits, we are only able to focus on certain things at a time. To most of the world we are blind as demonstrated by the experiments of D. Simons who showed that when told to focus on basketball players and count the number of passes completed, observers were unable to ‘see’ a huge gorilla walk onto the court. So we can not focus on everything and what we do focus on therefore is valued, why else we would focus on it at the expense of other elements.

The fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty provides a ueful allegory to help understand the relationship between order, chaos and awareness (consciousness). After many years of frustration and dispair, the King and Queen are finally blessed with a baby daughter, the princess Rose. Such is their joy they invite everyone to a christening to introduce her to the world and to allow everyone to show their joy by bringing gifts. However despite their elevated position, the King and Queen soon realise that they are unable to control their destiny. The christening raises some dilemmas: firstly what gift can you give a princess? The fairies gifts of beauty, and song will soon prove to be of little value. Secondly how do you prevent unwelcome guests?

The evil witch (furious at not being invited) curses the princess, sentencing her to death at the age of sixteen, caused by the prick of a spinning wheel’s needle. The story illustrates that even the most protective of parents can not protect their daughter from chaos. Indeed trying to protect her actually makes her weak and vulnerable. The spinning wheel is the wheel of fate, the prick that produces blood symbolises the loss of viginity and innocence.

The spell (fortuitiously) is reduced by the third ‘good’ fairy to eternal sleep redeemable only by a true love’s first kiss. The terrified monarchs destroy all the spinning wheels in the land and turn their daughter to the constant attention of the good fairies. Of course the strategy of removing all dangers from the princess is not only ultimately futile but leaves the princess naive, innocent and weak. As I said earlier, without exposure to chaos we can not learn and develop. Sure enough on her sixteenth birthday Rose pricks her finger on a spinning wheel and falls into unconsciousness. She becomes the Sleeping Beauty choosing unconsciousness over the terrors of adult life.

Something existentially similar occurs in modern life where over protected children seek the bliss of an ordered safe routine often involving large stretches of time unconsciously absorbed in front of screens (phones, TVs, computers). Take the young adolscent play station addict who is selfishly self absorbed gaming every evening. The parents feel this behaviour is anti-social but are too nice to intervene. More truthfully they do not pay attention or admit to what is happening, non-confrontation is the easier route. They are annoyed of course but pretend everything is OK. It is not OK. They will snap at their child later for something totally unrelated. The child will be hurt and confused but will learn nothing. Far worse is that he or she will continue to learn nothing. Later they will have problems socialising at school, they will feel rejected, and lonely. That will produce anxiety, depression and resentment. That in turn will produce the turning from life, more screen time and a wish for unconsciousness and the existence of a Sleeping Beauty.

This is a fun integrated skills lesson practicing reading and speaking skills based on the fairy tale: the Sleeping Beauty. By the end of the lesson students will have practiced controlled and less guided speaking practice leading into a dramatization of the story.